#481 Glenn Poulos and Niels Brabandt on Why Sales Leadership Begins With Discipline, Curiosity, and Strategic Courage
Glenn Poulos and Niels Brabandt on Why Sales Leadership Begins With Discipline, Curiosity, and Strategic Courage
Sales is often misunderstood as a function of persuasion alone. In reality, it is a discipline grounded in preparation, clarity, and leadership. In a compelling executive-level interview, leadership expert Niels Brabandt speaks with Glenn Poulos, LinkedIn Top Voice, accomplished entrepreneur, and author of Never Sit in the Lobby, about the principles that distinguish exceptional sales professionals from average performers.
Their conversation reveals a powerful truth. Sales success is not defined by charisma, but by disciplined execution, intellectual curiosity, and the courage to lead conversations with confidence.
Why “Never Sit in the Lobby” is a strategic leadership principle
Glenn Poulos explains that the principle of never sitting in the lobby represents far more than physical posture. It reflects psychological readiness. When sales professionals sit passively in a lobby, they become distracted, disengaged, and reactive. By contrast, standing and remaining mentally present reinforces confidence, attentiveness, and professional credibility.
This principle extends to leadership more broadly. Leaders who remain engaged, present, and proactive establish authority and trust. Passive behaviour signals uncertainty. Active presence signals leadership.
Equally important is Glenn Poulos’s recommendation to always ask for a mini tour. This strategic act allows leaders to observe operational realities directly. Decision-makers gain insights that cannot be obtained through presentations alone. Observational leadership remains one of the most powerful forms of strategic intelligence.
Why leadership begins when leaders learn to say no
One of the most counterintuitive insights shared by Glenn Poulos and Niels Brabandt is the concept that freedom begins with no. Leaders often fear rejecting requests, believing that agreement builds relationships. In reality, indiscriminate agreement undermines credibility.
When leaders confidently say no to unreasonable demands, they demonstrate clarity, authority, and professional integrity. This clarity strengthens trust.
Leadership credibility depends not on pleasing everyone, but on making principled decisions.
Why disciplined communication determines leadership effectiveness
Glenn Poulos emphasises the importance of disciplined communication, including leaving concise and compelling voicemail messages and delivering memorable opening statements.
Decision-makers face constant information overload. Leaders must capture attention immediately, communicate relevant value, and maintain focus.
Strong leadership communication requires preparation, clarity, and strategic intent.
Why curiosity, discipline, and resilience define long-term success
For professionals seeking sustained success, Glenn Poulos identifies three essential attributes.
Curiosity enables continuous learning and adaptation. Leaders who remain curious deepen their expertise and strengthen their strategic judgement.
Discipline ensures consistent action. Success results not from isolated effort, but from sustained execution over time.
Resilience enables leaders to withstand rejection and adversity. Every rejection represents progress toward eventual success.
These attributes distinguish exceptional leaders from average performers.
Why brand positioning determines strategic leverage
Glenn Poulos also highlights a critical strategic reality. Leaders must align themselves with strong brands and organisations. Strong brands provide credibility, market access, and strategic advantage.
Leadership success depends not only on individual capability, but on strategic positioning.
Conclusion: Leadership in sales requires discipline, courage, and strategic clarity
The interview between Glenn Poulos and Niels Brabandt provides a powerful leadership lesson. Sales leadership is not transactional. It is strategic.
Leaders who remain curious, disciplined, and resilient position themselves for sustained success.
Leadership begins not in the lobby, but in preparation, presence, and principled action.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
When the economy becomes tight, you probably think, "How can I sell more? How can I sell better?" And we have an expert on the matter with us here today. Hello and welcome, Glen Pullas.
Glenn Poulos
Hi Niels, great to be here.
Niels Brabandt
Thank you very much for taking the time, Glen. Glen, you wrote the book recently that someone should never sit in the lobby. Let's face it, most people I think consider the lobby rather comfy. And also, some people might think, "Isn't the lobby where I actually meet people? Isn't that where salespeople should hang out to meet other people?" What is your take on why did you choose this topic that someone should actually never sit in the lobby, while most people who I talked to said, "I think the lobby is pretty brilliant, isn't it? It's comfy, you meet people." What's your take on that?
Glenn Poulos
Yeah, that's a great introduction to the—that's actually a chapter in the book, right? And it's the title of the book, Never Sit in the Lobby. It's one of 57 tips on how to grow a career in a business—a career in sales and business, right? And so the whole idea behind never sitting in the lobby means—and it's funny the way you say it can be comfy working in the lobby, but the whole idea is that when you sit in the lobby, when you announce yourself and you sit down, you often get distracted on your phone, right? You start texting other customers. Worst case, you're texting your wife or something, and you're debating who's picking up the kids and who's going to the grocery store. And the customer walks in and he's like, "Excuse me, hello, are you Glen, right?" And you're distracted, and now all of a sudden you have to cut off your wife mid-sentence. That leaves you feeling weird. And for me, everything's about not being a bad look, like being a good look, right? It's not a good look, right? And so I'm always—so I show up on time, I announce myself, and I stand and I wait for the customer to present themselves. And then that way I don't get distracted. I'm not looking at plaques on the wall, I'm not skimming through magazines. And the other thing is that these are subtle, right? Is that if you're sitting down and a 6'4" vice president of procurement walks out, he could literally be four feet higher than you at that moment in time, right? You have to rise up. It's, again, not a good look.
Glenn Poulos
Now, he may want to sit down with you and then have a conversation in the lobby, but I have another rule that goes with the never sit in the lobby: always ask for a mini tour. And what I mean by that is you got to get behind the veil, the Wizard of Oz curtain of the lobby. And oftentimes people do think, "Hey, I'm in the lobby, I'm having this conversation, I'm finding out some good facts," but the real information doesn't really present itself until you get past the front door and into the building and where your product, service, software, what have you, would be used. Because that's where you start to see your competitors in action. What are they using now? Do they have you there to show you something that they truly want to look at, or maybe they just want to keep their competitor honest and they have nine of them installed, right? So I try not to hold my sales calls in the lobby, right?
Glenn Poulos
And then the third little piece of never sit in the lobby, always ask for a mini tour, but always have something in your hand and something in your mind, right? You want something to hand the guy and then something to ask him. Maybe he asks for literature, maybe he asks for a quotation, what have you, but you always—or maybe you're just there, you know him, you're bringing water bottles and mouse pads and swag and giveaways and stuff like that. But always have something in your hand to give him, something in your mind to talk to him about. Right there on the spot without fail, ask for the mini tour, and then you keep pressing on through the 57 other tips, right?
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. Excellent, excellent. One chapter where I already found the title very intriguing. Let's face it, most people who sit there, when you want to sell, what you're looking for is a yes. And you want to sit down, "Hey, this is what I have," and the other person says, "Yes."
Niels Brabandt
And one chapter begins with, "Freedom begins with no." And probably any salesperson would say, "The last thing I want to hear is a no," because from there it becomes really difficult. What is your approach with why does freedom begin with a no in your opinion?
Glenn Poulos
Okay. So yeah, so the whole idea behind freedom begins with no is a little—it's kind of the opposite of what I'm inferring or you're implying. It's more the sense that freedom begins when the salesman says no, or when you say no. And that is a life rule that you learn in business and in sales, not just sales, but when you're running a business.
Glenn Poulos
Because oftentimes you'll have fashioned a really good deal for the customer, you've got the delivery that they need, you've got the terms that they need, payment terms, etc., the pricing, it's all worked out. And now the guy says, "I'd like to have you bring in the proposal, drop it off finally so we can get this moving." You bring it in, and then another senior buyer shows up and says, "You know what, Glen, we're going to need another three points off the deal, right? We're going to need another 3% to get this deal across the line. Can you do it?"
Glenn Poulos
And a lot of junior salespeople or inexperienced people, they kind of get scared at that moment. And then instead of saying no, they say, "Oh, well, I don't know what we can do. I have to check with my boss." And then all of a sudden, by saying something other than no, you've accepted all the responsibility now, right? You've turned your life into a mess. You already know the answer is actually no, but you got to drive back to the office, talk to your boss. The boss is going to slap you and say, "Hey, why did you say you'd even consider it?"
Glenn Poulos
What you should be saying at that time is, "I understand your request, sir, but we've spent a fair bit of time crafting this offer. We've got you a production slot at the factory. You're looking for delivery in eight weeks. If you want us to get your spot in the line, we're going to need to get your order placed today. We've already given you our best price. I'm not going to be able to get you any more." And translation, the answer is no, right?
Glenn Poulos
And so then the freedom begins, right? Once you've said no, you don't have anything else to do. The customer can either buy it and get the delivery that he needs or not buy it and miss his production slot or miss his implementation date or whatever particular product he's buying from you, right? And just to increase the—but you can use that in every part of business, right? You have our direct report. They come in, they say, "I've been here a while and I need another raise," right? And, "Oh, well, we might be looking at things in April." And when really the freedom begins by saying, "We're not giving any raises at the moment. I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to entertain that request at this time." No. Right?
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. Clearly make a point. Excellent. By the way, also, I really see here that you know what you're talking about because I, of course, with every person getting in touch saying, "Hey, could I be on the podcast?" And I receive quite a high number of requests here. I always check, do people have a career in what they're talking about? And you really have a career, and it shows here.
Niels Brabandt
Another aspect which I found highly relevant was you say, unlike many others, many people say when you get to the voicemail, never say anything because it gives away too much. You always have to call back, never leave a voicemail. And you have two chapters. One is called, always leave a voicemail, and the other one says, make your hello memorable. Can you give us a bit of an insight, your experiences with these two?
Glenn Poulos
Sure. So yeah, the things about the voicemail primarily—so when you call, right, you're typically calling because you've emailed them, what have you. Now you're calling him, he doesn't pick up. And so my typical strategy is I leave a voicemail that's 20 to 30 seconds long, not too short, not too long.
Glenn Poulos
If it's less than 20 seconds, for instance, when I see my voicemails on my phone when I come back, if they're less than 20 seconds, I delete them because I assume that they're hangups and what have you, right? Nothing. And unless I see it's the IRS calling or something.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, then probably you should. Probably you should have a voicemail at least. If you don't disclose that voicemail, they definitely get back to you in one way or the other.
Glenn Poulos
But what I would say is in that 20 seconds, I say, and what I'm trying to do is leave the—give them that compelling piece of information that will get them to either answer the email, answer the voicemail, call me back in some way, shape, or form.
Glenn Poulos
It's Glen from Acme Distributing. We've been saving companies in your area a ton of time on packaging and shipping. I'd like to get 15 minutes on your calendar. I'll call you back tomorrow and I'm going to send you another email, right?
Glenn Poulos
Now you've got three or four. You sent the first email, you called them, you left a voicemail, you followed up with another email, and you called them again in a few days. That's three, four, five touchpoints, right? And a lot of times you need to get to seven or more before you really enter their saying, right? So
Glenn Poulos
and making your hello memorable, so there's two parts of it. One, I have my little saying on the website, the punch perfect pitch and close, right? Where the first thing you want to do in a presentation is punch them, right? People are not going to be talking about, right? And what I mean by punch is you want to sort of grab their attention and change their state. And if you've ever sort of started a presentation in a boardroom, it's so often the guy whips open his PowerPoint, he gets the key people in the room, and he starts with, "Oh, I'd like to show you that we have 1,200 people in our company. We've got a factory in Asia, and we've got our head offices in Paris. We also have remote offices in Dubai." And half the guys that are important are already asleep, right?
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, yeah. Hear a tap and hear lots of foxes and hear, "Okay, got that."
Glenn Poulos
Right? Boring, boring, boring. Nobody cares that you've already lost the entire meeting, right? What I do is I punch them with a change of state. So usually what I try to do is show them a video or play a sound, and then I make a statement, right? So I'll have a sound effect and then I'll say, "People using our systems have achieved over 20% savings in their shipping costs or in their packaging or in their..." And I don't sell those things. I'm just trying to make it generic for people to understand, right?
Glenn Poulos
But often what I've done in advance of the meeting is I've figured out the particular thing that I'm there for, the reason that they want that thing is this feature. Because often your product has four or five features and you want to run through them all, right? Because you're just so proud of them, right? It's bigger, faster, wider, cheaper, 20% cheaper, 80% deeper, all those kind of things, right? But maybe only one thing really matters to your customer and it's the throughput, right?
Glenn Poulos
And so what you want to do is maybe show them a video of a customer enjoying 50%, 100% better throughput. And this is what you can expect. And so you're kind of punching, and now you've got their attention. Wait, where is that? Where is that plant? Where is that office? Where is that whatever, right?
Glenn Poulos
And then the perfect pitch, you tell them what you're going to use the Goldilocks principle. You tell them what you're going to tell them, and then tell them what you told them. You tell them in sections of three, right? Break it down into the good, better, best, but everything should always be broken down into points of three.
Glenn Poulos
And then at the end, you know you've done it right when they say to you something like, "How much does it cost?" or "How long does it take?" or those kind of things. If they are not doing those kind of closing signals and you have to close them, you probably have failed somewhere along the way and you may need to step back and redo it, right?
Glenn Poulos
And so that's about strong opening lines. But just in general about strong opening lines, you just want to be confident and grounded. You want to be knowledgeable about what you're there to talk about, and you want to know how it's relevant to them. And I like to be energetic. I like to be bold. But at the same time, rapport, as you get deeper in my book, you realize rapport is very important to me, and you want to be warm and human and empathetic, right?
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. And also what really stuck with me is a yes-men get no respect. That is probably a line that will go down in sales because I have a sales background and I probably haven't heard that ever. And that's, I think, a very, very, very strong line. Yes-men get no respect.
Niels Brabandt
So when someone is now sitting there and thinks, "I'm just starting out in sales." So if I just ask with your experience, your wisdom, everything you did so far in your sales life, your top three aspects when someone says, "I want to become a better salesperson," besides, of course, one being buy this book, obviously, what are the other three top tips you would give someone who's probably rather junior in their career and wants to excel in what they do and set at the moment?
Glenn Poulos
So the first thing about being a salesperson is you want to be curious, right? You want to be curious about the products. There's a chapter called greed-based learning, which is a little gamification I use on how to learn products and remember the key facts. And so you need to be curious about things, right?
Glenn Poulos
So the other thing is you have to be disciplined, right? It's kind of like getting up and doing the next right thing, right? Like the economy that I'm working in right now, I'm on my third business. I sold one in Canada in 2022, and I bought a small company in the US, which I'm trying to grow, right?
Glenn Poulos
The company I sold was 80 million in revenue, and now I bought a sub-$5 million company in Florida, right? So I'm really walking the walk and talking the talk myself. But what I've realized over the last two years of doing it is what makes the difference is getting up every day, going to work, and doing the next right thing, right? Am I boiling the ocean? No. Am I solving world hunger? No, right? Is every day a success? No, but when I look back upon how far I've come in those two years, it's incredible, right? And so discipline is super important.
Glenn Poulos
And most people give up because it's painful, right? I don't want to make any more calls, and it's just such a grind, or I don't want to do this, or I don't want to do that, right? And the third thing is you need to be resilient, right? I mean, there's the old story, right? It takes nine no's to get the tenth one that's a yes, right? So you should be thanking every person that says no because you're just that much closer to getting a yes, right? And so those are some of the things.
Glenn Poulos
But for people that I always like to try to be those are sort of high-level discussion points. But in the real world, I tell people, when you get a job in sales, the first thing you want to do in those first few months is figure out which brand you're selling. Are you selling the number one, two, three, four brand, whatever? If you're selling less than the number two brand, quit. Get a better job because you're wasting your time, right?
Glenn Poulos
You're way better off selling the top brands because you still have to do the same amount of work or more for the lesser brands, and you're going to get a hugely less amount of the business, right? Because Pareto principle says that 80% of the people buy from 20% of the brands, right? Nobody got fired for buying HP or IBM or Dell or someone like that, right? And so you don't want to be they're explaining micron computers. Who's that, right? I mean, I've never heard of them. Where are those built? Do they have any support? Whereas if you walk in and you're IBM, HP, or Dell, no one has to explain the backing of those particular products, right? And so you only have one life to live. And so when you're in sales, you want to cut your teeth and you want to move up so that you're always trying to sell the best brand, number one or number two, because they're splitting 80% of the business. The rest of it goes to the rest of the brands. So you're fighting over 20%. If you're brand number four, you're probably getting 1 to 2% of the overall business pie.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. Excellent. So when now someone says, "Well, I think Glen could really be helpful for our organization," how can people get in touch with you to get your help?
Glenn Poulos
You can contact me on LinkedIn. My website, glenpoolis.com. LinkedIn is just Glen Poulis is my handle on LinkedIn.
Niels Brabandt
And you're a LinkedIn top voice as well. I saw that. You're a LinkedIn top voice. You were selected by LinkedIn personally to be one of the leading voices in this field.
Glenn Poulos
Yes, I was. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning that. And I'm there every day trying to share the message, and I'm quite liberal and generous with conversations with people. And so don't be afraid to reach out. Love to talk to anybody.
Niels Brabandt
Brilliant. I think these are the perfect final words. You see, you can up your sales game, but never sit in the lobby. Read the book. It's going to help you tremendously. And at the end of the podcast, there's only one thing left for me to sell. Glen Poulis, thank you very much for your time.
Glenn Poulos
Thank you.