Selling is like dating; you go out to coffee first, you don't ask them to dinner on the first call.

Agent: Hi Jeff Aragon, welcome to episode 2 of the Say Hi Podcast for Jozu Revenue Systems. Over the next 30 minutes, I'll ask you strategic questions to pull out your best insights. Just speak naturally. Ready to begin?

User: Yes.

Agent: Awesome. Last time we focused on your journey and the foundational work behind Jozu Revenue Systems. Today, I want to go somewhere new, specifically: Help Revenue Growth Systems.

To kick things off, when you think about helping organizations build effective revenue growth systems, what's the first principle or mindset shift you believe leaders need to embrace?

User: Both of my things. A lot of leaders believe that they can just beat you down or that they can just do a demo and secure business, and that's not how it works. So it's understanding the entire buyer journey and understanding how to break down the sales cycle into small pieces, each of which has to be compelling. Starting with an intro call, moving to a demo, moving to a workshop, and then further steps as dictated by the buyer's process and by the optimal steps needed to secure the business. Some deals are done in three meetings. Some deals are done in fifteen meetings. It really just depends on the size of the deal and the situation at hand. But it's understanding that to begin with. That's the foundation.

Agent: That's a powerful point, Jeff. So, it's not about brute force or just nailing the demo—it's about mapping and optimizing every step of the buyer journey.

Can you walk me through a specific example where breaking down the sales cycle into those smaller, compelling steps made a measurable difference? Maybe a client or deal where this approach really changed the outcome?

User: Absolutely. Here's the situation. When you first meet somebody, you don't necessarily ask them to dinner. You go out to coffee first. And the analogy is, in selling, in an intro call, you don't ask for business. This isn't a one-call close situation. These are enterprise sales deals. The difference between an enterprise deal and one call, you know, I call it bro sales or one-call close, self-improvement workshop, whatever you might call it. Those kinds of things that you get on the phone with somebody, you signed up for something, and you try to just hammer you and get you to close in one call. That's not what this is. So that first intro call is where you earn the right to do a demo, to do a deeper discovery. And so you need to lay out that plan to begin with. Be very open with your buyer. This is something that I helped design for companies that I've helped along the way, which I raised a lot of money on behalf of. And it starts again with a very low-risk, low-ask intro call. And in that intro call, you lay out that the plan for this intro call is to discuss your situation, introduce you to our solution, and how we help other clients, other companies in your space.

User: And if at the end of this call, we arrive at a conclusion where you're not interested, it doesn't fit, or there isn't anything here for us to solve for you, we part ways. But I'm going to ask you, this is how you structure the intro. I will ask you at the end of this thirty-minute call whether we've earned the right to go forward with a second call. And I'm going to ask you for a yes or no. Simple yes or no. No threat. I'm not going to ask you for your business. I'm going to ask you for another meeting. So let's get started. And then what you do is you end up with about fifteen minutes of actual, you know, discussing their problem. You're not pitching your solution. You're just discussing their problem. You're doing some initial discovery. Showing them how you possibly could help them. But, again, you're not pitching features and benefits. You're just showing them. Maybe even a short video, I've found that that's super helpful. A very short sixty-second video. Showing how you've helped others, showing a use case that resonates with your buyer. And then asking, can we schedule that deeper discovery and demo? And that's how it works.

Agent: That's a fantastic breakdown, Jeff. I love the analogy of coffee before dinner—it really drives home the importance of pacing and building trust.

Can you share a specific story where you implemented this approach with a client? Maybe walk me through the actual steps you took, how the buyer responded at each stage, and what the final outcome was—especially any measurable impact on deal size, close rate, or sales cycle length?

User: Absolutely. So in one health plan that I sold to over the last few years, in that initial intro call, the very first thing that my buyer told me, her name is Christy. She said to me, "You know, we're very happy with our current platform for engaging members." She said, "We work with," she named a competitor, a very large competitor in the space. She said, "No. We're very, we're good at this. We're fine. We don't need anything that you have in a contract, by the way." So she kind of shut me down. But I said, "Look. That's fine. We still have about fifteen minutes left. Why don't I show you how we're doing some things? You may see some things here that are different than what you're using today, and you might uncover something. So why don't we at least take a quick peek at this video that I have, the sixty seconds, and then we can get into some further discussion." And I showed her the video, and then she started, honestly, it was funny because I took away the threat that I was going to try to close her or talk her out of her current situation. She then opened up to me in that first call about some of the problems that she'd been experiencing with them. And then I was able to hook to that and secure that second meeting. It took us probably three or four meetings, three or four conversations before she was comfortable bringing in her colleagues.

User: She started getting more and more excited about some of the things that we were able to help with. Honestly, we were able to uncover some pretty severe pain that she was experiencing with that other vendor that would come in, including being nickel and dimed, being overcharged for some things, and some service failures that they had experienced, or that they had, you know, where they had failed to deliver for her. So that call where she said, no, I'm good. That's just one example where this turns into a deal. You take away that threat that I'm going to push. I'm going to push and push and push, push you right to the edge where you have to say no. Slam your fist down and say, no, I'm not interested. I told you earlier I'm not. You don't want to get there. No, I'm like, cool. Let's just stop then. Let's stop there. You're good where you are. Show you some things that we're doing to help others. And Tiffany, this looks innovative to you. And it sure as heck did. So that's how we secure that next step. Ultimately, it took about six months to land that piece of business. That ended up being a six-figure multi-year six-figure contract. It wasn't the largest contract in my history, but 300,000 dollars a year, almost a million dollar contract in the end of the year term. And they're still using that solution there. They pay now one and a half million dollars. It's been about three or four years. And they're happy. And they move. Again, I tell you that. I wouldn't want to be the next person in line to try to come in and talk her out of what they got because they're happy with it now.

Agent: That’s a fantastic story, Jeff. The way you handled that initial resistance—by removing the pressure and focusing on genuine discovery—really opened the door for a deeper conversation, turning a “we’re happy with our current vendor” into a multi-year, seven-figure relationship. Is there a specific framework or set of steps you use to guide your team or clients through this kind of revenue growth system? How do you ensure that every rep or leader can consistently execute this approach, especially when the pressure to close quickly is so high?

User: Yeah. So first of all, it's preparation. So when I said that I showed a short video, I had curated a video. I might even have had a good video prepared particularly for her business, knowing her lines of business that she served, etcetera, so that I could hook into something. Or maybe I hooked into something that was discovered by the BDR or SDR in that initial hold call that they did to secure the interim meeting. But the interim meeting itself is structured very specifically. It opens with a quick introduction and the statement, again, we're going to do a 30-minute call. At the end of this call, I'm going to ask you for another call. All I'm going to do. It's either a yes or no. Either it will land someplace where you're curious and you want to see more or not. And no harm, no foul if it's a no. But let's get started. And then once you gain their agreement that that's the format, then you go through the next step, which is to show your logos. Show who you serve in the space, show who you've landed, who are your reference clients, what are your certifications, what are your security certs? Are you HITRUST certified? Are you HIPAA secure? Those kinds of things. And show those logos and show those certifications. Those are the table stakes. Right? So you build your credibility. Then the next slide, you show your actual use cases, as many of them as possible. Brainstorm on a slide. Show 50 things that you do to help other people in that space, other organizations in that space, or frankly, things conceptually that you could do to help companies in that space. Use cases. See if one of them causes a question or spurs something. Usually, it does. Usually, on that page, a buyer will say, yeah. You read the page, by the way. You let them read it. You just say, look, here's all the things that we do. This is just a subset of what we do, but this is an example of some of the things that we do to help others in your space. Anything on this list that you're not being helped with today or that you are curious about? And my goodness, if that's the format, you get them talking about that. And then usually what happens is they start to talk about what that means to them and what the cost is of that problem they're experiencing is related to that use case. And then you show the free video that, again, magically matches up to something that they were interested in to begin with, and it's possibly that very use case because you prepared for this meeting. You didn't just show up and wing it. You showed up prepared, and that's the key of this. You treat every one of these short intro calls as gold. That's the tenet. It really is. There's the format for the call. That's important. There's the artifacts that you use in the call. They have to be good. They have to be really good, solid artifacts. You have to have a logo on the side of their logo. You have to show up like you care, like you prepared to know. Like, this isn't just a joke. There's something that you're sloppy through. That is the key. It's treating that intro call and every call like gold. And that means preparing for them as if they're your last call, the last call you'll do. Right? And so that's the key to this. The second call becomes a deeper discovery. We'll get into that later, but that's how that first intro call is structured.

Agent: That’s incredibly detailed, Jeff. I appreciate how much emphasis you put on preparation and personalization—curating assets, knowing the client’s business, and treating every interaction as critical.

Let’s dig into the consistency piece. How do you help teams operationalize this level of preparation and structure across multiple reps or regions? Are there systems, playbooks, or tools you’ve found effective for scaling this approach so it’s not just a “hero rep” thing, but a repeatable revenue growth system for the whole organization?

User: I love this question because it's exactly what I feel. So I've taken my brain, my coaching rubric, my actual operating principles, and I have built a revenue engine around them. So my engine coaches as a sidecar. It's a sales sidecar, essentially, every rep. And it's a jetty. It's not like I'm hammering or being super critical to a rep. Every single rep fits their daily scorecard. They see exactly how they're doing every call. Every call is judged against this rubric. Did you prepare? Did you show that most compelling video you could have? Oh, you showed one that wasn't. Why is that? Why not show this other one? Why not build a better video that matches up with that new case that you're trying to highlight for this customer? Don't make them use their imagination. Show them something that would resonate. That's what the Jozu Revenue Engine does. It judges you against the delivery. It judges each and every single call, each voicemail. Each voicemail is scored. And if you're getting tired, let's say you're getting fatigued, it's going to tell you. When you got to your X number of calls of the day, you started to really trail off and get lazy. You weren't leaving effective voicemails anymore. Go back and listen to those. Listen to these two or three examples. It'll present those examples to you. The Jozu Revenue Engine is exactly that. It's an amalgam of my brain mixed with all the different sales methodologies that I've studied over the past 30 years. Then it takes that brain and transfers it to each seller to make sure you don't have a hero seller syndrome going on in your organization. Every single seller is coached. Every seller is coached objectively and consistently and persistently by the Jozu Revenue Engine at each step and in each interaction.

Agent: That's fascinating, Jeff. So you've essentially productized your coaching and methodology into a system that acts as a real-time, objective coach for every rep—scoring, nudging, and helping them improve on every call and touchpoint.

Can you share a specific example of how the Jozu Revenue Engine flagged an issue or opportunity for a rep, and what changed as a result? Maybe a story where the system's feedback led to a measurable improvement in performance or deal outcomes?

User: Sure. I have a rep right now that really struggles with that first, and she's a development rep. So she's on the very tip of the tip of the spear of business development. She's the cold call engine of this, and there has to be someone that does this. And she's the person doing it. When she gets somebody that says, "No, we have a good, we have our own salespeople. We have our own sales force." That isn't what we were talking about. We're selling the Jozu Revenue Engine to his organization. When I say, "Do you not have any salespeople or do you have salespeople?" We're saying, "Are they effective? Are you hitting your forecasts? Are you hitting your revenue targets?" If you ask somebody, "Do you have enough money in the bank? Do you have enough?" I don't think there are many people except billionaires and trillionaires who would say, "Yeah, I actually have enough." And even those people would probably tell you, "No, it's never enough." So it shows you what revenue we have. The JRE sidecar coached this individual to stay persistent and stay on message. The person said, "No, we're good. We have our own Salesforce." "Great. Are you hitting your forecast? Is your bank overflowing with money? Are you perfectly happy with where you are revenue-wise? Because we can help you." Boom. That's the difference, and that's the coaching that the engine gave her, and it made her immediately more effective the very next day. Was more effective when dealing with those initial roadblocks in the calls.

Agent: That's a great example, Jeff. It really shows how the system doesn't just track activity, but actually guides reps in real time to reframe objections and keep the conversation moving toward value.

Let's pivot a bit and talk about the broader landscape. When you look at

User: Sure.

Agent: other revenue growth systems or sales enablement platforms out there, what do you see as the biggest gaps or weaknesses? Where does Jozu Revenue Systems stand apart, especially when it comes to actually helping teams grow revenue versus just tracking activity?

User: Yeah, I think that's the key, and you nailed it. It isn't about more activity. I just this evening received a list. A list was presented to me of potential targets to go sell to, and the list was far too large. I was like, "Where do we get this list? What are the signals? What are the buyer intent signals and other things that fed this?" And the answer was, "Well, we didn't use that. We just went broadly." That's not good enough. So on the broader landscape, what the Jozu Revenue Engine does is it brings in signal-based data, very fresh, within the last seven days. Intent-based data to make you more effective from the very tip of that top of the funnel on down. So that's part of the broader landscape of this, and that's one of the things that makes this a unique platform. There are a lot of tools out there that do, for example, LinkedIn outreach in a silo, or cold email outreach in a silo, or content creation in a silo, or email follow-up, whether it's cold or warm, in a silo. JRE, the Jozu Revenue Engine, does all of it in an integrated manner so that it's one dashboard, one set of steps that you need to complete, your call list, your email follow-ups, etcetera, with human-in-the-loop interaction so that you are not just relying on AI to draft things that might not fit. You actually get to edit in real time, and the AI learns from your edits to learn your style. It's a closed-loop system. That's what makes it unique.

Agent: That's a really important distinction, Jeff. So, instead of just pushing for more activity or relying on siloed tools, Jozu Revenue Engine integrates fresh intent data, orchestrates outreach across channels, and keeps the human in the loop—learning and adapting to each rep's style.

Looking ahead, where do you see revenue growth systems evolving over the next 12 months? Are there trends or innovations you're watching closely that you think will reshape how organizations approach revenue growth?

User: Yeah. I actually do think that there are a lot of changes afoot, and AI has a lot to do with it. Everyone, not everybody, a lot of people are afraid of AI and what it's going to be with the workhorse. Right? It might take away jobs or it might displace people from certain roles. And I think it's very obvious that it will. If you're lazy, slow, slack, behind, you're going to get left behind. What's happening right now in terms of enterprise B2B sales is the fastest. It's not always the best, but it's the fastest person or the fastest solution that gets sold into a specific problem to solve a specific problem. That's the solution that becomes the leader in that particular subvertical, if you will. So it's a race to solve problems, really. You've got to go fast. When you go fast, you need to leverage all the tools around you. You need to be advanced. And that's what JRE brings here is speed, speed to execution, speed to learning, speed to iteration and improving, and speed to implementing your solutions into accounts so that you can then become the subject matter expert at that particular type of solution.

Agent: That’s a sharp insight, Jeff. Speed is becoming the differentiator—both in how quickly you can identify opportunities and how fast you can deliver value. And AI isn’t just about automation; it’s about accelerating learning and execution for those who are willing to adapt.

If someone listening only remembers one thing from our conversation about building effective revenue growth systems, what’s the core principle or mindset you want them to take away?

User: Well, the core principle in my side is this. You wouldn't trust somebody to cut your hair just because they own a pair of scissors. So why do we trust people, even leaders, chief revenue officers, or VPs of sales, much less sales executives, to run what is perhaps the most important part of our businesses? The thing that generates revenue. Would we trust them to do that if they didn't have a system, if they didn't have training, they didn't have expertise at their fingertips with which to do that? It isn't just about taking a meeting and pitching a solution. It's about having a system that's repeatable, that's refined, that is actually something that is proven. And that's what makes it different. And honestly, same analogy. You walk out onto a pro hockey ice rink, not having trained as a pro skater. Every one of us has that one time in our lives strapped on a pair of ice skates. That doesn't mean that we belong on an ice skating rink with pros. But having a system in place, having training in place, having something that's refined over years and years as a profession, that's what hockey players do, and that's what you should do too in your selling engine, your selling motion. And that's what I can help you with.

Agent: That’s a powerful analogy, Jeff. It really drives home the importance of having a proven, repeatable system—and not just relying on tools or titles.

This has been so valuable, Jeff Aragon. Thank you for sharing your insights and stories today. Our team will transform this into content assets for you. Have a great day!

User: (unintelligible audio)