This isn't a resume. It's the story of six graduates, five months, and the
thing I learned watching what happens to a new seller when no one tells
them what good looks like.
The ladder
I started on the dials. I didn't stay there.
A hundred dials a day in call centers for Bank of America and Capital
One. Cold prospecting at Equifax, calling on prospective banking
customers. Then hunting as a business banker — in person and on the
phone.
After that, enterprise: British Telecom, Vodafone, Sinch. Telecom,
digital transformation, cloud, cybersecurity, professional services.
Deals from five figures to eight, multiyear, sixty days to eighteen
months, as deal lead.
I mention the ladder for one reason only: I've stood on every rung
you're climbing.
- Phone Bank of America · Capital One call centers
- Prospect Equifax — cold outreach to banking prospects
- Field Business banker — hunting in person and by phone
- Enterprise BT · Vodafone · Sinch — multiple eight-figure contracts
The six
They were bright. They were getting nothing.
Six graduates did their sales rotation with my team at BT. They were
capable people who had been handed a phone, a target, and almost no
instruction. They didn't understand the sales motion. They didn't know
what the daily work was supposed to look like, or how to run any of it
over the phone.
I watched for a month, assuming someone whose job it was would step in.
Nobody did.
The five months
So I taught them everything I had.
For the next five months I passed on every piece of it I could. Not
motivation — mechanics. What to look at before a call. How to open. What
to do when the room goes quiet. How to tell whether a buyer is actually
moving or just being polite. How to keep track of what you changed and
what it did.
And one thing that isn't mechanics at all: whether sales was right for
them in the first place. Sales has to be something you feel and believe
in. Part of coaching someone honestly is helping them find out if they
don't.
An honest no is a good outcome. Nobody tells new sellers that either.
Eight years later
Three stayed. All three became top performers.
Of the six, three stayed in sales. Every one of them went on to be a top
performer within their unit in BT Business Group. Two are still at BT
today. The third moved to a competitor and is still selling there, eight
years on.
Eight years is the part that matters to me. Anyone can produce a good
quarter after a training session. Structure is what's still working
nearly a decade later.
What it became
The system is what I taught them, written down.
What I gave those six wasn't a pep talk or a set of war stories. It was
structure — a way to see what you're doing, name it, and fix one piece at
a time. That's what became the Five-Level Digital Engagement Scale
and the tools built around it.
It rests on two things I believe from experience. First: confidence isn't
a personality trait you summon, it's what's left over after you've measured
yourself against a standard. Second: sales really is a numbers game — but
the number is how many small things you've tested and tracked, not how many
times you dialed.
Volume without correction is one mistake, repeated a hundred times.