Why Elite Sellers Watch Their Own Game Film

Summary

Revenue Builders Podcast: "Why Elite Sellers Watch Their Own Game Film"

Date: February 1, 2026
Hosts: John McMahon and John Kaplan
Guest: Bob Koses, Author of The President's Club Mindset
Theme: What truly separates elite sales performers from the rest—focusing on self-assessment, preparation, authenticity, and mastering relationship dynamics inside challenging deal environments.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the mindset and methods of elite B2B sales professionals. The hosts and Bob Koses explore how top sellers self-coach by reviewing their own "game film," the importance of preparedness, and the crucial distinction between authentic passion and mechanical selling. They discuss the nuances of building strong internal and customer-facing relationships, finding champions and neutralizing "enemies" within accounts, and how self-awareness differentiates top sellers and leaders from the rest.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Power of Reviewing Your Own Game Film

• Technological Advancements in Self-Assessment
  • Modern tools (e.g., Gong) enable reps to review their own calls—something not available "back in the day."
  • John Kaplan (00:50): “We can self assess, Are we prepared? Are we calm? Do we understand, differentiation? … We now have technology that can self assess.”
• Responsibility of Self-Review
  • Many sellers know others listen to their calls, but fail to review themselves.
  • John McMahon (01:47): "Not enough people are doing it. I don't understand it. I mean, game film, could you imagine being an NFL team and not watching game film?"
  • John Kaplan (02:04): “For me [it] would be insanity to go into watch my game without having reviewed the film myself and then wait for the coach to tell me what I did right or did wrong.”

The Sales Meeting Dynamic: Reps vs. Technical Teams

• Some reps let technical staff dominate calls, failing to engage or take leadership.
  • Bob Koses (02:16): “The rep introduces the people on the phone. They never say another word, says goodbye... just let the technical people run the call. It's awful.”
  • John McMahon (02:36): Highlights the need for reps to lead meetings, even as technical roles remain vital.

The Critical Role of Preparation and Team Rehearsal

• Even experienced sellers consistently cite lack of preparation as a pitfall.
  • John McMahon (03:14): “A lot of them did say, hey, you know, the one thing is… you can never prepare enough.”
  • Especially vital in large deals—team-wide preparedness makes all the difference.

Elite Seller Attributes: Self-Awareness and Authenticity

• Top performers move at a different pace—focusing more on quality interactions than quantity.
  • Bob Koses (03:59): “They needed to call on one account to get one [deal].”
  • John Kaplan (04:39): “They're self aware… they know what their conversion rate is, know what a champion is, know how to get an economic buyer involved…”
• The most dangerous state: being unconsciously competent, i.e., successful but unable to teach or replicate it.
  • John Kaplan (05:01): “…they weren't self aware. They did not understand what made them successful. That's almost as dangerous as being consciously incompetent.”

Genuine Passion and Its Impact

• Elite sellers are passionately authentic; they deeply believe their solutions help customers.
  • John McMahon (05:57): “They deeply understand how they're going to affect the customer… they just believe it so deeply.”
  • Bob Koses (06:42): “You can’t create passion and get people to believe it. It has to be really authentic.”
• Longevity in high performance directly ties to personal belief in the work’s importance.
  • John Kaplan (06:51): “There’s a direct correlation to what I have energy for, to what I believe matters.”

Building Champions and Visioning Beyond the Close

• Top reps excel in:
  • Connecting their solution to the customer’s pain and the personal win for their champion.
  • Selling the “as is” picture of post-sale customer success, not just the close itself.
    • John McMahon (07:53): “I always like to tell the reps, focus past the close to the as-is scenario of where the customer is going to be successful…”
• Great reps continue cultivating references and relationships even after the deal closes.
  • Bob Koses (09:22): “They have done a great job in continuing to build the relationships with those people and use them as really powerful references.”

Mastering Value, CFO Conversations, and Dealing with "Enemies"

• High-performing reps regularly bring value and are comfortable talking to the CFO.
• Addressing "enemies" (internal detractors) head-on is mature and necessary.
  • John McMahon (11:06): “You want to find your enemies in these big, complex accounts, and you may not win them, it’s okay, but you have to neutralize them.”
  • Bob Koses (11:25): “After you talk to him long enough, you kind of figure out what his strategy is.”
  • John Kaplan (12:16): “Some of the most impressive enemies… are basically… somebody else's champion.”

Recognizing and Neutralizing Subtle Opposition

• Not all enemies are overt—some are subtle, due to internal politics.

  • John Kaplan (13:16): “If they have power and influence… they're actively selling on somebody else's behalf and there's a vested interest for that other organization's success.”
  • Bob Koses (13:34): “They can be very, very shrewd and make you believe that they're going to be your champion when at the end of the day, they're stabbing you in the back.”

• If no opposition surfaces, it may mean the rep isn’t pushing deep enough.

  • John Kaplan (15:02): “If you start seeing somebody who's threatened, it means you're doing your job because the enemy is surfacing… When you don't see any enemy, that's actually a red flag.”

• Actionable advice: Don’t avoid detractors—meet with them, learn their motivations, and work to neutralize or win them over.

  • John McMahon (15:26): “Go, go meet with your enemies. Go spend time with them… You can’t run from it. It’s going to come back and bite.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On self-assessment and preparation:
  “We can self assess... We now have technology that can self assess.” — John Kaplan (00:50)

• On not watching one’s own "game film":
  “Could you imagine being an NFL team and not watching game film?” — John McMahon (01:47)

• On self-awareness and teaching others:
  “They did not understand what made them successful. That's almost as dangerous as being consciously incompetent.” — John Kaplan (05:01)

• On authentic passion:
  “You can't create passion and get people to believe it. It has to be really authentic.” — Bob Koses (06:42)

• On building champions:
  “Focus past the close to the as is scenario of where the customer is going to be successful.” — John McMahon (07:53)

• On the role of enemies in deals:
  “If you start seeing somebody who's threatened, it means you're doing your job because the enemy is surfacing.” — John Kaplan (15:02)

• On not running from difficult stakeholders:
  “Go, go meet with your enemies... You can't run from it. It's going to come back and bite.” — John McMahon (15:26)

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Key Takeaways

• Elite salespeople take ownership of their development by rigorously reviewing their own performance.
• Preparation and team rehearsal are universally underperformed, even among experienced pros.
• Self-awareness and genuine passion are key differentiators—not just for sellers, but also for great sales leaders.
• The best sellers focus on the customer’s value and success story, not just the close.
• Building champions requires understanding their personal wins, and sustaining relationships for future references.
• Engaging “enemies” and neutralizing internal opposition is a mature, critical skill for winning complex deals.
• Absence of internal resistance may indicate a lack of deep value creation for the customer.

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For B2B sellers and leaders aiming for elite performance, this episode delivers timeless reminders and concrete, actionable advice for building winning sales cultures and deepening personal accountability.

Transcript

[John McMahon]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. Today's episode features a segment from our conversation with Bob Koses. Bob's the author of the President's Club Mindset. In this clip, Bob explains what separates elite salespeople from the rest. And it's not just about skill. It's about the discipline of watching yourself. He breaks down how top performers review their own game film, recognize what's actually happening in the deal, and make small adjustments that lead to big results. If you're a rep trying to sharpen your edge or a leader building a culture of accountability and growth, this is a mindset shift you'll want to hear.

[John Kaplan]

There are tools now that just weren't available back in the day when I was selling and if I was going to look at game film of how I performed in a sports environment to learn if you had gong and all these other tools, these things that we're talking about, we can self assess. We don't need a lot of people to tell us like, are we curious? Are we, like, we can self assess, Are we prepared? Are we calm? Do we understand, you know, differentiation? Do we understand when something changed in the environment of, you know, somebody started looking down and said, you know, they started looking at their phone, they started looking at their computer screen or whatever. We now have technology that can self assess. It's funny, I talk to a lot of people and they know that people are listening to their calls, but they're not the ones listening to their own calls.

[John McMahon]

It's very true. Not enough people are doing it. I don't understand it. I mean, game film, could you imagine being an NFL team and not watching game film?

[John Kaplan]

Well, how about being on the team and knowing your coach is going to watch it for hours and you're not going to watch it right like.

[John McMahon]

That.

[John Kaplan]

For me would be insanity to go into watch my game without having reviewed the film myself and then wait for the coach to tell me what I did right or did wrong. I mean, well, what about listen to.

[Bob Koses]

A lot of transcripts? What about your teammates? You listen to a lot of transcripts and the rep introduces the people on the phone. They never say another word, says goodbye and tries to schedule the next meeting, but they don't participate at all throughout the call. They just let the technical people run the call. It's awful.

[John McMahon]

Yeah, it happens more. It happens a lot too, John. And it's one of the things where I, you know, I think that, you know, sales leadership that's listening here, you know, you need to make sure that the reps are taking the active leadership role in the meeting and running the meeting. And obviously the technical team plays an incredibly important job in, in everything. But, but yeah, that's a, that's something I think is a miss today. I see it more and more.

[Bob Koses]

So what's a common mistake that when you interviewed these people that they admitted that even with their experience, they sometimes still make the same mistake or make a mistake. Were there any common themes there?

[John McMahon]

Yeah, you know, I think the one I'm going to go back to, what we already talked about a little bit because it was a theme, is that a lot of them did say, hey, you know, the one thing is you can, you can never prepare enough. So like we talked about preparedness. So that one did come out from a theme of, you know, these are things we, that we could do, you know, we could do better. And then the other one that kind of comes out is they don't force the preparation. They didn't force the preparation as much as they should. So what that means is really just rehearsing with the team ahead of the calls. You know, a lot of times in these larger deals especially you're going to have three, four, five people in a meeting and just making sure you're prepared correctly. And the team really understands going in is critical. So those are a few that came out, you know.

[Bob Koses]

But Johnny, going back to one of your points, the top guys that I've known or top people that I've known that were always doing the big deals that were always over quota, it almost seemed like they were moving and they were, they were moving at a different pace than the rest. The rest of the group is running more emails, more calls, more demos, more everything. And these other big game hunters, they move at a different pace there. You know, everybody else needed to call on 10 accounts to get one. They needed to call on one account to get one.

[John Kaplan]

And they're self aware. So for me, that old. I'm piggybacking on what you're saying, Johnny. They're not waiting for people to tell them what their rhythm is because they've established a rhythm and they, they're self aware. Like, I know what my conversion rate is. I know, you know, I know what my competition is doing. I know what a champion is. I know how to get an economic buyer involved. So people are very self aware. So there's some people, they say the old adage was like unconsciously competent, was a very dangerous. And sometimes I would find very talented people multiple year president's Clubs, winners that made horrible sales. Leaders, they were incredible in the field, but yet they were horrible at teaching others. And it was, they weren't self aware. They did not understand what made them successful. That's almost as dangerous as being consciously incompetent. And it's so I find that like, that's one of the big differences between great sellers and great leaders are the ones that flip the switch on that they're so self aware that they can teach it. Does that make sense?

[John McMahon]

Yeah, it does. John McMahon, back to the point you just made, which I think is, is also incredibly good. When people, if they're having a hit rate where they're, they're, they're going to 10 accounts, they're not getting any of them. But then you got the, like you said, the elite seller could be hitting everyone. They're getting in the door. A lot of it has. And what we found when we were doing this research was a lot of it has to do with the fact that they deeply understand how they're going to affect the customer. But they're so passionate about it. They just believe it so deeply. They're like, no, you have to, you have, you have to spend time with me. You don't understand. We're doing this for this company and this company and this company. They so deeply are passionate about it. It's almost like you have to go.

[Bob Koses]

Take the meeting, you know, but it's authentic.

[John McMahon]

It's so authentic, you can't make it up.

[Bob Koses]

You can't create passion and get people to believe it. It has to be really authentic. They really believe it because they've seen.

[John Kaplan]

I call that knowing what you do matters. Like you could ask any of those perennial winners if they believe, do you believe what you do matters? And there's not a 23 year President's Club winner that can tell you that, that because they won't have energy for it. There's a direct correlation to what I have energy for, to what I believe matters. And there's no way you could do that job for 23 straight years if you didn't believe it mattered. Very few people could do that and, and perform. Nobody could do it for that and not perform.

[Bob Koses]

So Bob, did you find like we were always talking about, you know, really good reps know how to find champions and really bad reps always are talking to coaches and rarely, you know, get, get great champions. So did you discover in your conversations, was there a certain tactic or strategy or conversation or things that the great sales reps had to do in order to turn potential.

[John McMahon]

It came out really, it came out a lot through all the, all the, the interviews and plus, you know, other folks. I talked about the book as well. You know, I think a couple things. One is they really understood how to connect the solution to solving the pain to solving the personal win. So they were able to connect those three very deeply. And they were under. They really understood for the person they wanted to create into a champion or build the champion what that personal win was going to be and painted the vision. I always, I talk about this. So many reps, they are focused on the close. I'm not suggesting in this call the close is not important. It is. But I always like to tell the reps, focus past the close to the as is scenario of where the customer is going to be successful and get the customer envisioning themselves in that scenario, not closing the deal with you, but envisioning them in success with you. And the close is just a step in the process. Of course you want to get on your timeline, but it's a step in the process. And the, the great reps, they were all saying that, they were all like, no, we would invit. We would explain to them how, you know, somebody would say, oh, this feature's missing, or this is missing, or that is missing. They would dismiss that and be like, no, look, this is what we delivered for this customer. Let's explain how you're. We're going to get you there, right? And yeah, there'll be some blips along the way, but we're going to get you to this scenario which is going to make you successful and is going to have a great outcome for you. And therefore that person started becoming their champion because they really believed in it versus just believing on the point of closure. And then you're going to leave them, which a lot of, a lot of reps do, unfortunately.

[Bob Koses]

They've done a great job also in getting those champions, getting them to the as is picture. But then the people that they have closed that have seen the results, they have done a great job in continuing to build the relationships with those people and use them as really powerful references where those people are passionate also.

[John McMahon]

Absolutely. It was one of the, you know, still one of the biggest things is creating your own references. When I interview people, I'm always asking, how many references have you created on your own? Like, you know, and can I talk to your customers? Because the best reps, the, I think I believe the best ones, they, they. They don't need marketing to create references. Not that that's not important. I think there is a place for that. And having all the. Having those success stories is definitely in place, but I think that the great ones just know how to. To do it at a different level. And. And when they create those, it just becomes a snowball effect because people want to do business with them. Right.

[Bob Koses]

What about value and talking to the cfo? The great reps, because they're doing big deals, are finding their way all the way to the sea level in a lot of these accounts. And the deals are so big, you are going to. A lot of times get. Need to present the cost justification and have a CFO ready business case prepared. Have. Did you find any. Did you get any findings with.

[John McMahon]

We didn't talk. We talked a lot about the unique. Yeah, we talked a lot about the unique value prop and how you. The importance of presenting it and making sure it connects correctly. And we talked a lot about. A little bit about enemies. Right. But I think the thing I would say came out of that the most is people get a little scared to approach somebody they think is an enemy. And I think that's a mistake.

[Bob Koses]

Right.

[John McMahon]

What I talk about in. I think it's chapter six or. I think it's chapter six is you want to find your enemies in these big, complex accounts, and you may not win them, it's okay, but you have to neutralize them. You have to at least get them to even.

[Bob Koses]

Right?

[John Kaplan]

Yeah.

[John McMahon]

But if you at least get them neutral, they're. They're not going to fight, you know, and that's. That came out.

[Bob Koses]

You kind of figure out their strategy, because if you talk to them enough, you kind of figure out their strategy, Right. I used to. When I was selling, I had this. I called on General Dynamics, and it took me a really long time to sell this big deal. And there's. There's this. At that time, there was this data services division. So basically it was the I. T. Division of them, and they basically assigned a guy that was the enemy to find out. Everywhere I went, every building I went into, every meeting I went into, and every time I came out, he was right there. And then we'd start, you know, laughing in each other's faces and telling jokes and stuff like that. But he knew I was his enemy, and he knew and vice versa. But after you talk to him long enough, you kind of figure out what his strategy is, right? So.

[John McMahon]

Absolutely.

[John Kaplan]

Well, one of the things I see on that subject, the. I think the immaturity that people. You'll see it in the. For sure in the perennial president's club winners. But a lot of people think it's the person that is going to be wailing and gnashing of teeth at them that is going to be, like, rude to them. It's going to be. And I found some of the. Some of the most impressive enemies I've ever witnessed in an account are basically, for me, it's the definition of a champion. Power and influence, actively selling on your behalf and a vested interest in your success. So for me, the definition of an enemy, they are somebody else's champion. And it's not this wailing and gnashing of teeth. But if they have power and influence, they're actively selling on somebody else's behalf and there's a vested interest for that other organization's success. I just think that's a very mature way. It's the flip side of it. A lot of times people are saying, well, there's no enemy. You know, nobody's given me a hard time or. Some of the shrewdest enemies are the ones that are. Are, you know, they're. They're not showing any cards because it has nothing to do with you. It has something to do with a solution for the other individual.

[John McMahon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bob Koses]

They can be very, very shrewd and make you believe that they're going to be your champion when at the end of the day, they're stabbing you in the back.

[John McMahon]

That's not the case. Yeah.

[Bob Koses]

Where it's so bureaucratic. These guys learn to smile on each other's faces. They're basically politicians, you know, and they learn how to smile on each other's faces and stab each other in the back. That's what they basically do for a living. So then here comes some poor little sales rep that thinks they're going to take over that guy's. Whatever that guy's in control of or get recognized for. And they know how to play that game better than that sales rep. And the sales rep falls right in the trap.

[John Kaplan]

I think, like, you know, sometimes it's even not as sinister as, like, somebody, you know, somebody being in that mode that's like, you know, I'm gonna stab you in the back. Whatever. I can think of times when I have been. I don't think of myself as somebody's enemy, but I am their enemy because I have power and influence in something I have. I am actively selling on somebody else's behalf, and I have a vested interest in somebody else's success. It's just like that. My mindset is over there. I It's not about you. It's about one other thing.

[Bob Koses]

You're taking their personal win away from them. You know, if they have control over something or they get recognized for something or approval for something, you're threatening that. Yeah, that recognition. That, that personal win. You're threatening their win and they're going to come after you.

[John McMahon]

I love it.

[John Kaplan]

One last thing on this is like Johnny's saying, if you start seeing somebody who's threatened, it means you're doing your job because the enemy is surfacing. Because your solution, your reputation, your relationships are a threat to that person. So when you don't see any enemy, that's actually a red flag because you're not bothering anybody.

[John McMahon]

And I think to your guys earlier point, which I think is critical, go, go meet with your enemies. Go spend time with them. Go figure it out. And it's going to. It's not easy to do. Right? It's not easy to do. You, you have to go figure that piece out. You can't run from it. It's going to come back and bite.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.