Offerings · High Integrity Selling System · AI Enablement and Build
I enabled the wrong audience.
I write your sales conversation down move by move, then encode it so AI can coach every call against it, inside your own systems.
The longer version of thatClose
The managers were coaching and the field was running the conversation. The most capable learner in that building had not been in the room, because AI had just become the first technology that could understand one.
THE HIGH INTEGRITY SELLING SYSTEM · SUSTAIN THE BEHAVIORS
SUSTAIN · THE BEHAVIORS THAT BUILD CULTURE
Coached into habit by trained managers, and by an AI coach built on your message.
AN AI COACH
Built on your message and the method, so every seller has the coach between sessions, on every deal.
The wrong audience
The enablement had gone well. The managers were coaching, the field was running the conversation, and the client was happy with what they had bought. I sat down with their president afterwards and told him he had paid me to enable the wrong audience.
I was only beginning to absorb what had actually changed. AI was the first technology in history that could understand and execute conversational dynamics. That made it the first technology that could legitimately become sales technology living in the reality of a conversation, rather than sales technology sitting alongside one, counting things.
There is a joke in this at my expense. One of my reasons for moving into sales in 2001 was watching the internet take apart whole categories of work and deciding I never wanted to be in a field that could be disrupted. Sales, I was certain, could never be that field. So much for my vision.
So we did both. Beyond coaching the new skills into behaviors for the managers and the field representatives, we built the messaging and the methodology into the firm's agentic harness. Any rep could get coached, effectively, at any hour. And any manager could proactively assess how their team was doing against the skills that decide deals.
I was doing what I always do, which is working to make myself irrelevant. I found what I have found every time I made myself irrelevant in corporate: bigger tasks were waiting.
That is the one I am on now. We are looking at AI to emulate field behaviors, driving a lower cost of sale while increasing conversion rates. That should free capital to invest in higher leverage assets, and raise operating income out of a lower operating budget. It is a different conversation from buying a coaching tool, and it is the one I would rather be having.
Vendors I work with
None of this runs on software I sell. It runs on other people's, and these are the ones I work with and partner with. The descriptions are theirs, taken from their own home pages.
AI ENABLEMENT AND BUILD · VENDORS I WORK WITH
Vendors I work with
Accord · inaccord.com
"The AI Layer for Revenue Execution."
"Accord transforms value-selling methodologies like MEDDPICC into playbooks that make winning behaviors unavoidable. Every rep performs like your best, while AI Agents handle the work that takes your team off the field."
1mind · 1mind.com
"Superhumans built for Every Revenue Motion."
"Across the entire Journey: Engaging, qualifying, demoing, onboarding, and supporting in real time. No handoffs. No waiting."
Apollo · apollo.io
"The AI sales platform for smarter, faster revenue growth."
"Build pipeline smarter, close deals faster, and simplify your tech stack with a unified platform built for modern sales and marketing teams."
Aligned · alignedup.com
"Stop losing deals between meetings with Aligned AI deal workspace."
"Run deals in a single shared space where buyers decide faster, and AI agents surface risk, map stakeholders, create content, and guide the next step."
One application, built
Your methodology encoded into AI that reads real calls, so coaching reaches every conversation instead of the few someone had time to review. That is one thing the story above turns into, and it is the one that exists today, so it is written out below at full depth. It is an example, not the boundary of the work.
What it is
Try to encode your methodology and you will find out inside two weeks whether you have one. That is the useful part of this, and it is true before any software exists.
This is built and it is running. My own conversational methodology is encoded into a client's AI at Energage, coaching sellers against real call transcripts, inside an engagement I am still in. The position behind it is older than the build: I was telling a client to put call recording and AI review in place in 2021, and I wrote my stance on AI coaching into a signed client contract in April 2025, before there was anything to point at.
AI ENABLEMENT AND BUILD · WHAT IT IS
The precondition
The specification
Your conversation described in order: what a seller is establishing, at which point, and what that sounds like in the buyer's own words once it has been established. Written with the people who run the conversation rather than derived from a pile of recordings. If it cannot be written down it cannot be encoded.
A scoring layer, on evidence rules
The rubric's job is to tell buyer-validated evidence apart from seller inference. A seller typing they have budget into the CRM is an assumption. The buyer saying what the budget is, on the call, is evidence.
A verification step, with a name on it
The system proposes an assessment. A manager confirms it or overrides it, and the overrides are the tuning mechanism rather than a complaints channel. The machine never has the last word about a person.
Integration, into what you already pay for
It runs on the call recording platform and the CRM you already pay for, inside your environment, and it is yours to keep tuning. There is nothing here you rent from me.
The rest of what it isClose
Most teams asking for AI coaching have a methodology living in three places: a framework name on a slide, a rollout three years ago, and the instincts of two or three good sellers who could not tell you what they do. A machine cannot work from that. Encode it and what comes back is something that checks whether a rep said the words.
So this starts with a specification: your conversation written down move by move, with what evidence of each move looks like in a transcript. The moment you try, the gaps surface. Two of your leaders disagree about what qualified means. Nobody can say what an urgent problem sounds like. None of that is an AI problem, and all of it was true before anyone tried to encode anything.
That specification is most of the value here and it is yours whether or not you build the thing that reads it. What gets built on top of it is a scoring layer with evidence rules that hold what the buyer confirmed apart from what the seller inferred, and a verification step where a named manager decides before any assessment reaches a person. It runs on the call recording platform and the CRM you already pay for.
The specification comes before anything is built
Your conversation described in order: what a seller is establishing, at which point, and what that sounds like in the buyer's own words once it has been established. It is written with the people who run the conversation rather than derived from a pile of recordings. If it cannot be written down it cannot be encoded, and finding that out is worth the exercise on its own.
Evidence rules before scoring
The rubric's job is to tell buyer-validated evidence apart from seller inference. A seller typing "they have budget" into the CRM is an assumption. The buyer saying what the budget is, on the call, is evidence. Every assessment points back to a line somebody actually said, and a score built any other way is an opinion with a number attached.
A manager decides, and the disagreements tune it
The system proposes an assessment. A manager confirms it or overrides it, and the overrides are the tuning mechanism rather than a complaints channel. That is how the encoding learns what your managers mean by good, and why the machine never has the last word about a person.
- Something worth encoding: a conversation your team actually runs. Sales Training and GTM Transformation
- Managers who will act on what the review surfaces. Leadership and Manager Coaching →
- Stage exits defined against something the buyer confirmed, so there is a fact to check for. Cross-Functionally Aligned GTM Process
Why it matters
What changes
Coaching stops being rationed.
Which calls a seller gets developed on has always depended on who had a free hour that week, which is why a seller quietly repeating the same mistake gets seen the fifth time instead of the first. That constraint is arithmetic rather than effort.
Your managers converge on one definition of a good conversation.
The rubric carries that definition, their overrides keep correcting it, and the standard a seller is coached against stops changing depending on who did the coaching.
What a buyer confirmed and what a seller believes become separately visible.
A pipeline review can ask what the customer actually said and get the line back from the transcript, so the forecast runs on the record rather than on conviction.
The conversation your company sells with stops living inside two or three good sellers.
Written down move by move, it becomes something you can teach to a new hire, debate as a leadership team, and change on purpose when the market gives you a reason to.
Nobody at your company is judged by a machine.
Every assessment that reaches a seller carries the name of the manager who confirmed it, which is what makes it usable in a coaching conversation instead of something people learn to discount.
The standard keeps running after I stop touching it.
It sits inside the recording platform and the CRM your team already has open, documented closely enough that your own people tune it when the conversation changes.
Who it is for
What I usually hear before this starts
- Only a fraction of our calls ever get reviewed, and by whoever had time that week.
- We bought a conversation intelligence tool. It gives us talk ratios, not whether the deal is real.
- Two managers score the same call two different ways, and both of them can defend it.
- We know we want AI in the coaching loop. Nobody can say what it should be looking for.
This is the problem this offer is bought against. The full page →
How it runs
- Duration
- Six to ten weeks to specify, build and calibrate. Then tuning, which is continuous, because the conversation changes when your market does.
- How it is built
- Specification, then the rubric and the evidence rules, then integration. Then a pilot cohort, where your managers and the system are calibrated against each other on real calls until they agree what good looks like. Then handover.
- Where it runs
- On the call recording and the CRM you already pay for, inside your environment. The specification, the rubric and the tuning process get documented and handed to your team. There is nothing here you rent from me.
- Who must be engaged
- Whoever owns enablement, the managers who will do the verifying, and whoever owns the systems this plugs into. Plus a revenue leader who will use the output in a pipeline review, because output nobody uses is how this dies.
- What you supply
- Calls that are genuinely recorded, with the consent and privacy position settled on your side. A methodology in use rather than in a binder. Managers with time on the calendar in the first weeks, when their overrides shape the most.
- What I will not build
- A compliance checker that scores whether a rep recited the words. A system that grades a person with no manager's name on the assessment. And an encoding of a methodology that does not exist yet, which is the most common version of this request and the one I turn down.
AI ENABLEMENT AND BUILD · HOW IT RUNS
What I will not build
What gets built
- A specification of the conversation you want, written down move by move, with what evidence of each move looks like in a transcript.
- Scoring rules that separate what the buyer confirmed from what the seller assumed, where every assessment points back to a line somebody actually said.
- A verification step where a named manager decides before any assessment reaches a person, and whose overrides are the tuning mechanism.
What I will not build
- A compliance checker that scores whether a rep recited the words.
- A system that grades a person with no manager's name on the assessment.
- An encoding of a methodology that does not exist yet, which is the most common version of this request and the one I turn down.
Two reasons this works
The attempt is the diagnosis, and you keep it either way
Where a methodology is an acronym and a few people's instinct, there is nothing for a machine to check, so writing the specification is the hard part and it is the part that pays for itself first.
Why that mattersClose
It takes the people who actually run the conversation, and it produces something useful the moment it exists: a definition of good your managers can debate and then agree on, before any software gets built. If we get that far and you decide not to build, you keep the more valuable half.
It has to live where your pipeline review already happens
What survives inside a company is what sits in the tools people already have open. This puts the definition of a good conversation into the recording platform and the CRM, where your pipeline review already happens, so the standard turns up in the workflow rather than in a document somebody has to remember to consult.
Why that mattersClose
Every override a manager makes is a correction to that standard, captured where the next assessment will use it. That is what stops it decaying into a rubric nobody believes.
What it is like to work with me
“I had the privilege to work with Russell 3 times. After many years of selling and sales leadership where I have been trained at Solution Selling twice, Customer Centric Selling 3 times, Sandler once, Force Management 3 times, I can easily say that Russell is one of the best facilitators of sales training I have met. His ability to lead a room with 2, 3 or 400 people is absolutely incredible. Russell has this gift of feeling the energy of the people he interacts with and can instantly adapt his speech to them; Russell has an extremely strong psychology and can really lead and inspire others through a shared objective. Last point that really inspired me when I was working with him is that Russell enjoyed so much what he does that it is contagious with everyone and make them enjoying learning.”
“Russell, I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate your efforts this week! I’ve been through many sales trainings and this was the best I’ve ever attended, much due to you. My team is pumped!”
“Russell, I teared up at the end of your session b/c you reminded me of why I loved sales strategy so much. Thank you for your warmth, the kindness you exuded, and the passion you shared.”
“I was not exaggerating when I told you, and several others, that I have been in many training classes over the years, and this will absolutely stand out as the best one, bar none.”
“Russell’s ability to break down complex concepts into simple, actionable strategies made an immediate impact. Since then, I’ve brought him back multiple times. Russell has a unique talent for making sophisticated sales principles easy to understand and, more importantly, easy to apply in day-to-day selling. Russell immediately elevates any GTM teams efforts.”
Questions people ask
We already have a conversation intelligence tool. Is this that?
No, and it does not replace it. That tool reports what happened acoustically: who talked, for how long, which keywords came up. It cannot tell you whether the buyer confirmed the problem, because nobody has taught it what confirmation looks like in your business. This is the layer that knows your conversation, and it runs on top of the recording you already have.
Our methodology is a licensed framework. Can you encode that?
Not as it comes. A qualification framework tells a seller what to do and when. It does not describe how the conversation goes, and a transcript is a conversation. So the work is specifying how your framework shows up in the words on a call, which is the same work whether it is licensed, homegrown, or half remembered from a rollout three years ago.
Are you going to score my people?
The system proposes and a manager decides. I build it in that order deliberately, with verification in place before the scoring is tuned rather than added afterwards, and every assessment that reaches a seller carries the name of the manager who confirmed it.
When the engagement ends, who owns what you built?
You do. The specification, the rubric, the evidence rules and the tuning process are documented and handed to your team, and the whole thing runs inside the recording platform and the CRM you already pay for. There is nothing here you rent from me, and nothing that stops working when I stop being in the room.
This is the Sustain part of the work: the standard staying alive inside the systems your team already uses, after the training room has emptied and the coaching cohort has closed. Your goal, not my service line.
Most of what I am asked to build here, I will not build.
I turn down the encoding of a methodology that does not exist yet, and the machine that grades a seller with nobody's name on the judgment. If either one is what you are being sold, that is the reason to call.
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