Episode #56
Sales Follow-Up Process: How to Close Without the Pushy Old-School Script
Most companies think they have a lead problem. They don't. They have a follow-up problem. And even the ones with a follow-up process lose deals the moment a rep opens their mouth and sounds like they're reading from a compliance document instead of talking to a real person. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Bryan Wong, Head of Inside Sales at L2T Media, a digital advertising agency focused on the automotive space. Bryan has spent years doing cold calling and building inside sales teams, and his take on sales process, follow-up, and sales mindset is about as far from the Zig Ziglar playbook as you can get. Bryan breaks down why the best sales framework is less about the script and more about the directions, why outcome-dependent salespeople are their own worst enemy, and what it actually sounds like to follow up with a prospect the way you'd text a friend about plans. He also gets into why old-school pushy sales tactics are generationally obsolete, what the shift from high-pressure closing to consultative selling actually looks like in practice, and why cold calling is one of the most underrated channels left in B2B. In this episode, we cover: ✔ Why most sales teams don't have a lead problem, they have a follow-up problem ✔ The "directions to 7-Eleven" framework: what a sales script should and should not include ✔ How to write follow-up emails and calls that don't sound like corporate form letters ✔ Why outcome dependency makes salespeople stiff and kills conversion ✔ What Bryan learned about talking to people at his first job selling shoes at Vans at 17 ✔ Old-school vs new-school sales culture, and why hard-charging tactics fall flat with younger buyers ✔ How modern buyers arrive 50% decided before they ever talk to a rep ✔ Why the willingness to walk away is one of the most underrated sales advantages ✔ Cold calling in 2026: why fewer people are doing it and why that's actually an opportunity ✔ What consultative selling really means when you strip away the jargon ✔ The mindset shift that lets salespeople relax on the phone and perform better for it If you're a founder, sales manager, AE, or marketing leader trying to figure out why your pipeline converts worse than it should, or why your team keeps sounding scripted even after training, this conversation will give you a different way to think about what sales actually is. Because sales is not persuasion. It is helping someone decide whether moving forward is right for them. ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. Learn more about L2T Media here.
