---
title: Jim Speredelozzi
description: Jim currently leads the direct sales, customer success and partner growth teams for the Predictive Index (PI), a firm focused on Talent Optimization.
---

[Peak Performance Selling Podcast ](https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast)

# [Jim Speredelozzi](https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast/jim-speredelozzi)

 Written by [Jordan Benjamin](https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast/author/jordan-benjamin) | Feb 17, 2021 2:04:58 PM

**Notes From The Episode:**

- [Jim Speredelozzi on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/speredelozzi/)
- Sales might be the only profession where people commonly have the “this is how I fell into sales story”
- College roommate had a father in sales. Roommate said he was going to be in sales too…..why would you even go to college?
- Finished college with Liberal Arts degree but no liberal arts jobs
- Didn’t think he would be a fit for sales, but he was a nerd and passionate about computers so it seemed to work out
- Sociology stigma in sales and he had it but thinks it is changing - colleges starting to teach sales, guest lecture at MIT & Harvard & Bentley 
- **Helping people make a positive change is how the best salespeople operate**
- **The best sellers and sales leaders instill a belief system FIRST, before they focus on the tactics **
- Assumptive close….probably not the best
- **Your Belief system is the most important part of sales** -** ATTITUDE**
- [Sandler- Success Triangles ](https://www.sandler.com/success-triangle/)
- **If you do not believe you’re there to help people, you will not be successful in the long-term**
- **Shouldn’t sell to people that you can’t HELP**
- **Make the world better through Better work! Make people’s life at work more enjoyable, be more engaged at work**
- More engaged at work = happier employees = happier relationships at home = better world
- 90%+ of revenue comes from a partner network of business consultants
- PI Tools & Talent Optimization platform to enable those changes - But first WHAT IS THE PROBLEM THAT NEEDS FIXING?
- PI Reference Profile - Captain - Proactive, task orientation, assertive, extroverted - good for sales - flexible but enjoys process too 
- PI founded in 1959
- Collaborators - ME- help teams be cohesive, get everyone to feel good, useful when you have a toxic culture because they help the teams gel, long-term affiliations, patience, struggle to deal with transactional sales role, enterprise sales 
- **Anybody can do any job.  Question is what is NATURAL for them?** It’s more WORK for someone to do some of those other things, like me to do a transactional sale
- **Find something that aligns well with your innate behavioral needs**
- Sales hiring - I don’t want to build a Sales Team- I want to build a team of leaders and a LEADERSHIP Development function! They could be used internally or expand outside of the organization
- @BlackDuck if people hate it and don’t want to be a part of it and you only hire them based upon sales experience. So people quit and you’re set-back
- ⅔ of the sales people he hired quit within a 3 month period - looked to see if he could start using Behavioral Assessment - got attached to PI
- **He was hiring for experience vs. looking for behavioral fit for a leadership role**
- Get rid of sales experience as a qualifying factor and your pool of candidates opens massively 
- **Can create a great salesperson in 6 months. Hard to breakdown bad habits**
- Best way to start learning how to sell is, make Cold-calls, possibly the hardest job in sales. Get a lot of looks and some of the belief systems. 
- If you can’t get your attitude right, you can’t cold call effectively
- Learn to quickly establish rapport in an efficient way
- Most people don’t want to talk about sports or weather
- **You can’t make a positive change with somebody if you don’t spend time talking about the business problems and challenges they are trying to solve**
- How to use Empathy & Humor (self-deprecating) to build rapport
- **You believe the people you’re calling you can help**
- Build empathy- quickly - [The Like Switch ](https://www.amazon.com/Like-Switch-Influencing-Attracting-Winning/dp/1476754489) - build rapport with Russian Agents
- **The Empathic Statement- quickly build rapport by showing empathy- greet someone new and Notice something about them and STATE IT…..”SO You….” “So you seem….busy, stressed, frustrated”**
- Empathy =** experiencing someone’s emotional state with them or at least a concern for theirs when you match tone that focuses on concern. **
- Working with MBA candidates - they are not envisioning themselves in sales in an end state - they will attempt to found a company or be senior exec- they know they’re going to have to sell to be effective in so many business roles
- Lou Shipley- CEO of Black Duck - “The first thing the board asks you is how does the sales forecast look” 
- How to bounce back - Extreme Ownership - Jock Willink - Cannonballs, **when something bad happens- CELEBRATE IT now you can figure out how to fix it**
- **First thing as a sales leader when you miss a month- look at yourself and your leadership to see how YOU can be accountable to that result**
- You don’t make excuses
- **Don’t want to be in a position where you feel as bad as your worst month or as good as your best month**
- What could I have fixed and done better? Even in a great month
- What did I do wrong? 
- Mike CEO @ PI - Avid Sailor- **“Let the storms show your mastery”**
- You control your ship, your team, what you do
- Office Olympics - Captains are Hyper competitive 
- Behavioral interview and tailor it to the person.  If you suspect someone will be weak in an area- a question about a time when they’ve shown - Look for the emotional response, why they won/lost. 
- Favorite question for sales people- Do you have any questions for me? ASK SOME QUESTIONS- At the most senior level to not seem curious or excited is a way to fail!
- **Curiosity sells you, because people love to talk about themselves and their company**
  
  **Links:**
- [Success Triangles](https://www.sandler.com/success-triangle/)
- [The Like Switch](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IWUSZ84/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) - Jack Schaffer
- [Extreme Ownership](https://echelonfront.com/extreme-ownership/) - Jocko Willink 
- [The Predictive Index](https://www.predictiveindex.com/)
- [Jim on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/speredelozzi/)

[View full post](https://www.mycoreos.com/podcast/jim-speredelozzi)

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