Shadowing Practice: Brutally Honest Advice About Sales in 19 mins - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If you're in sales, you're in a career path that lets you earn more than 90 % of people your age.
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It is statistically proven that sales produces some of the highest income earners in the world.
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But the big catch is there's no barrier to entry, no degree necessary, you don't need connections, you don't need permission, like no one has to let you in.
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You just start.
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But that's also the exact reason most people in sales never make any money.
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Because it's so easy to get in, they don't treat it like a real profession the way you would if you were a doctor or a lawyer.
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Nobody wakes up one morning and decides they're going to try
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and become a surgeon for a few months and see how it goes.
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But people do that all the time in sales.
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And there are truths in this world of sales that if you don't respect them, this becomes the most fruitless thing you can spend your time doing.
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But if you do respect them, you don't have to be a natural, right?
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You don't have to be the smoothest guy on the floor you just have to be a professional about it
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and that's really the whole gap you'd be pretty dumb to click off this video
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because most people who get into sales quit about month four
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and just tell everybody
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that sales wasn't for them it usually wasn't sales my name
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is micah vu i've had nearly a decade in sales
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and i actually started cutting my teeth door knocking in high school for donations
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and since then professionally i've knocked thousands of doors i've made over half a million cold calls
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and generated over 12 million dollars in revenue for my businesses
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and to this day i still pick up and dial the phone
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so in this video i'm going to give you the seven truths about making money in sales not necessarily tips
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or scripts these are the seven things i tell a rep
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on my own floor right from day one some of these
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are going to sting a little bit all of them will make you money
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if you let them truth number one the calvary is not coming What do I mean by that?
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In a lot of ways, sales is war.
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Battle every single day.
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If you're in a battle, say in ancient Rome or I don't know, pick your era, you're out there, you're losing and you're waiting for backup.
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You're waiting for the Calvary to come over that hill and save you.
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And here's what happens when you're waiting.
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You don't perform at the level that's required of you.
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You're half in it.
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Part of your brain is doing this math on
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when help is going to show up and then the Calvary just doesn't come.
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And so what happens?
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You literally die.
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The mentality of waiting is what kills you.
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Let me give you an example.
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January 1879, South Africa, the British and the Zulu are at war with each other.
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And there's a little British outpost in the middle of nowhere.
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It's a church, a small hospital and a stone wall.
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That's it.
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There's about 150 guys and 35 of them are sick in bed.
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They can't even stand up.
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That same morning, a few miles away, the main British army gets completely wiped out.
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1 ,300 men gone in about an hour.
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So the backup, the guys who would have come and helped them, they're already dead.
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They just don't know it yet.
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Then a rider comes in and tells them 4 ,000 Zulu warriors are headed this way and there's nobody behind you.
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Here's the whole point.
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The British soldiers didn't wait.
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They knew nobody was coming and they lined everything up around that.
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They didn't have walls, right?
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It's a supply post.
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So what did they have?
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They had bags of corn and wooden crates of biscuits.
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That's it.
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So they spent two hours building a wall out of food.
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Grain sacks, stacked chest high, crates on top of that.
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They're smashing holes in the hospital wall with their rifles so they can shoot through them.
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And then they fight all night, 12 hours in the dark behind a wall made out of corn.
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And they hold the line.
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17 of them die.
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11 of them get the Victoria Cross, which is basically the British version of the medal of honor
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11 guys in one night that's still the most that's ever
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been handed out for a single fight this is what happens
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when you're all in in sales what i see constantly is
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people waiting what do they wait for they wait for the
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list to refresh they wait for new contacts to get added
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they wait for a new territory to open up right they
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want a new campaign to launch in our model we're fractional
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meaning we run campaigns for different companies it's i'll turn it on
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when i get a good campaign
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and in some ways it doesn't look like quitting feels like you're being patient it looks reasonable.
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But two things are wrong psychologically during that period.
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Number one is you're training your mind to be weak.
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You're training yourself not to own the outcome.
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You're waiting for a miracle, which means you're now susceptible to whatever the environment hands you, whatever it gives you, that's your ceiling.
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And number two, and this happens because you're already in that weakened state, you start feeding the narratives, right?
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These leads suck, the dialers suck.
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I need a better dialer.
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I need a better CRM.
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I need to send more emails.
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I need better data, right?
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I need more tools.
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I need, I need, I need.
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And the reality is you just need to put in more work and own the outcome.
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That's it.
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If the cavalry's not coming, you just need to figure it out.
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It's that simple.
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You look at what you've been handed and you go, okay, did I get a wooden sword?
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Did I get a steel sword?
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Or is this a butter knife?
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And if it's a butter knife, then you need to figure out how to kill 4 ,000 Zulus with your freaking butter knife.
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That's just the reality.
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That mentality, like I'm going to figure it out.
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I'm literally going to do the impossible here.
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That's the thing that unlocks the impossible.
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Even on the Glen Cocoa sales floor, we have to break this belief every single day.
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It's not something you break once and it's gone forever kind of thing, but there's different degrees of it.
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You can slip back into that mindset, that victim mindset happens all the time.
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And especially if you're a growing sales organization, obviously you've got new reps coming in constantly with that victim mentality.
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I'll wait till I have a great campaign.
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I'll wait till I have a great list.
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I'll wait till there's a client that pays me more, one that's actually worth my time.
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And I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but on our floor, the best campaigns and the best leads are reserved for the people who already embody that mentality.
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And how do we know they embody it?
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Because they figured it out first and the campaigns and lists
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and the contact and whatever crap we gave them when they first started.
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Now, sometimes we just ask them straight up.
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Do you truly believe you can figure this out?
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And sometimes then we tell them flat, Hey, like this is the mentality you need to have here.
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But honestly, most of it is from observation.
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You know, how do they respond to the coaching?
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How do they respond to adversity?
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And so that tells us a lot.
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That tells us pretty much everything.
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Here's what you need to plant into your mind.
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Whatever it is you're waiting on right now, write it down and then work today like it's never coming.
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Not forever, just today.
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So if you're waiting on leads, they're not coming.
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Where do I find leads?
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Do I need to go scrape it myself?
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Do I need to go purchase some from a broker, right?
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The CRM sucks.
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We're waiting for a new CRM in like three months from now, whatever it is.
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It's not coming.
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So figure it out.
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The Calvary is not coming.
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Truth number two, the leaderboard doesn't lie.
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And this is the meritocracy truth.
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Sales gives you honest feedback daily.
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And that's the gift most careers never give.
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Here's the claim.
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In most jobs, you can actually be mediocre for years.
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Why can you be mediocre for years?
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It's because mediocrity lives in the shadows.
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It exists, but no one really knows it's theirs.
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Some people call this the status quo.
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In sales, the leaderboard tells you your results at the end of the day, every single day.
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Your excuses and your numbers sit on the same screen.
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Everyone works the same market and someone on your team is closing in it right now.
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And so brutal feedback is fast feedback.
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The board also shows you exactly how far you are from the person to copy.
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Exactly.
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Back in the day when I was dialing full -time, I'd usually flip -flop with, there's a rep named Anthony and there's a rep named Kaven.
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Kaven's with Glyn Coco now.
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We boom, boom.
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One, two, three, right?
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We're back, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
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And then one week I'm like, number eight on the board.
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And I'm like, holy smokes.
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Have I lost it?
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Do I suck now?
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What's going on?
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Is this even for me?
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And then I said to myself, here's how to think about this, quit arguing with the board and go study the person at the top of it.
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Ask to sit on their calls.
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Most reps never do that.
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Listen to their calls.
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But the board has a quiet failure mode too.
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And it sits in the comfortable middle.
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And that's the next truth.
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Truth number three, comfortable is the career killer.
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Here's what I believe about sales.
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The most dangerous number in sales is a base salary that's just barely enough.
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It buys off exactly the hunger that makes reps good.
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And so personally, I've worked sales gigs where it's 100 % commission.
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I've also worked sales gigs where I have a nice cushy base and some good upside.
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A rep who's covered either way works differently, behaves differently than a rep whose output pays them,
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where the upside is uncapped and makes a significant portion of their income them.
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Everyone in sales has seen both versions of themselves.
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Now, I get it.
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There's folks out there.
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You should provide liabilities.
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You got a mortgage.
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You got bills to pay.
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You need a safety net.
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And I think that's great.
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Maybe you're at the stage in your career where the base is what you need.
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But some of the best sales reps I've met at one point or another had to kill what they ate, had to sing for their supper.
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They take that mentality and they run up the score as much as they can.
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So performance pressure with zero floor can break people too.
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Nobody here is saying, you know, starve yourself into greatness.
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Just don't let the comfort pick your ceiling.
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And mentally, how do you approach this?
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Whatever your comp plan is, track the number that pays you, right?
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Every single day, every single week, for the most part, and put it where you can see it.
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Comfort hides in vague numbers.
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Here's the next Thanks thing that's going to annoy some people because it's about the advice industry itself.
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Truth number four, most sales advice comes from people who actually don't sell anymore.
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And why am I saying this?
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This is the strongest, most contrarian truth.
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I'm not saying every guru and every coach out there and every trainer are useless.
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There are some people that were actually genuinely good in their era of sales, have great coaches out there that have great systems
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that you can draw from
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but the reality is sales is an evolving game there's techniques there's angles there's strategies
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that are cutting edge of the sales game a huge share
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of the sales content you watch is made by people whose last real pipeline was years
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and years and years ago sometimes decades ago
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and it's for one simple fact teaching sales pays better than doing it
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and it shows in the advice here's how you can tell
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if it's legit
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or not the advice from non -sellers is really clean frameworks
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with no mess in them no real examples objection trees where
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the prospect cooperates perfectly every single time role plays where nobody's
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kids scream in the background like real calls aren't clean
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so how do you sift through all the noise filter every
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piece of the sales advice through one question has this person taken a cold no recently
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if you can't tell assume not and weigh it accordingly
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that includes this video
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which is why everything in it comes straight off the sales
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floor speaking of what actually happens on real deals here's where most of them die
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and it's after everyone has already hung up
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so truth number five deals die after the call not on it
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and this is the process truth this is the unsexy back half of selling where the money actually leaks out.
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So here's what I see.
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Reps obsess over what to say live, then lose the deal in the days after.
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The recap that never got sent, the follow -up that slipped, the next step nobody locked in.
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The call is the performance.
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The follow -through is the paycheck.
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Buyers almost never tell you they drifted or they forgot or they just go quiet.
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And quiet is usually a follow -up you didn't send.
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What happens on our sales floor?
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How do you cure this disease that so many sales organizations suffer from, which is not following up with prospects?
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The gold is in the follow -ups.
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80 % of your deals will come from follow -ups.
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The second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth touch on your prospect.
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What we do on our floor is number one, we give our guys like automated sequencing and follow -up tools.
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But oftentimes the conversation is the best form of follow -up.
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And number two, if a lead being worked is not followed up on within three days of that last touch, it gets sent back into the pool.
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It gets sent back into the general list where every other rep can go and attack it.
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Okay.
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So number one, they get enabled and they know exactly what they should be following up every single day, but it's a choice.
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It's actually a choice not to work it, but it's, you know, things slip through the crack.
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Reps go on vacation.
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That lead needs to get worked.
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So guess what?
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Someone's got to work it back to the pool.
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And I see this across tons of organizations.
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So we had this large business communications company that we worked with.
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They paid us $100 ,000 a month to generate appointments for their channel partners.
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So we had 40 of their top channel partners that we were calling on behalf of.
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And out of those 40 channel partners, guess how many actually followed up and didn't blame the leads?
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Guess how many?
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Two.
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And I still remember them because I love those guys because we would send them a deal.
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And two years later, they would close a deal.
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Two years later, after we booked a meeting, they would close that deal.
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Why?
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Because they followed up and they were pleasantly persistent quarter after quarter.
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And they eventually close them down.
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Statistically, that's one in 25 % of sales organizations, at least for that sample size.
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And this was 40 of their top channel partners.
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Okay.
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Here's what you need to understand.
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Never end a conversation without the next step booked on a calendar, and you need to send the follow -up before you dial the next number.
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And it's boring on purpose.
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The boring parts are where the money is.
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And if the thing stopping you from all this volume is fear of the bad calls, the next truth is for you.
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So truth number six, nobody remembers your worst call.
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Nobody.
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This is the emotional truth.
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This, I'm going to deflate your fear that keeps you from dialing and asking and continuing to ask and continuing to dial.
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So think about this.
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We've all had just that awful call, that awful sales pitch.
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It was so embarrassing.
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You said so many stupid things.
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The prospect yelled at you, telling you to never call him again, whatever it was.
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You're thinking about you're replaying that at 2 a .m in the morning.
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The prospect already forgot about you.
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Your team already forgot about it.
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You're a 10 second interruption or a 30 minute interruption on a stranger's Tuesday.
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So for me, you know, after half a million dials, the disasters blur together.
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What sticks is the skill you built from working through them.
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Here's the nuance with this is this is permission to be brave and the preparation is still on you.
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Prepare properly.
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Then remember the other person has already moved on.
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So here's how to think about it.
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When a Zoom call goes badly, write down one thing you did well and then one thing you do differently.
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Just one thing and then go to the next, right?
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Whether that's the next cold call, the next sales call, and you want to do it immediately after before you even
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get a chance to think about it okay one truth left
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and it's the reason all the hard ones are worth it
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so truth number seven sales is the last career
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that ignores your resume no other high income career asks this
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little permission no degree gate no pedigree gate no five -year ladder
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if you can create meaningful trust -based conversations solve problems and close sales the market pays you now.
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Here's why this is true.
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At this point, I've interviewed a couple thousand reps, and the people I've hired come from everywhere.
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Uber drivers, door dashers, failed actors, musicians, software engineers, digital nomads,
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psychology majors, college students, across the board.
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And not once does our leaderboard ask where anyone went to school.
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What we do look for is number one, the effort.
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And are there times in your life where you've shown effort beyond what's required of you?
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Number two is active coachability, which for some might be a new skill where, you know, when they come in with us, but it's not only that you're coachable when given feedback,
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but also that you're actively seeking that constructive criticism.
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And then number three, do you value the team aspect of work and the team aspect of sales?
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Because at the end the day if
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if you think you're just a lone wolf you know let
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me get my work done let me make my money you're
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probably coming from a sales environment where that's the normal
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and you know maybe it's doggy dog it's every man for himself
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but the best sales teams i know have both a competitive
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and a collaborative element to their organization
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so think about all seven of those for a second the
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pipeline is on you the board is public comfort is punished the advice is mostly noise, the follow -through is graded, the rejection is constant, and none of your credentials matter.
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But back to the very start of this video, the reason most people never make money in sales is that anyone can walk into it.
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So almost nobody treats it like a real profession, meaning those seven brutal things, that's the actual filter for success.
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So if you respect them, you are already past most people who started when you did.
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The honest part and the good part, And the job that tells you the truth every single week is a job you can actually get better at.
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Lots of careers and most careers never tell you the truth at all.
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People spend 20 years in them wondering why nothing's changing.
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So at the end of the day, if I had to start over from zero, I'd pick sales as a career every single time.
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And it's not about the money.
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It's because sales teaches you communication and it's the hardest version of communication.
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And if you can communicate properly, you can connect with people.
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And if you can genuinely connect with people, you can get pretty much whatever you want out of life.
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So that's all seven.
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If you're a B2B company and you want a team that lives this stuff every single day, booking your sales meetings for you and your closers, that's literally what we do at glenncocoa .com.
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Link's in the description.
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And if you want to see what all seven of these look like over one very long day, watch me lock myself in a room until I close the deal.
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That's right here.
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So we'll see you over there.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 325 sentences and 3535 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:34. The speaker talks fast, about 190 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- rep /ɹɛp/ (noun) — A fabric made of silk or wool, or of silk and wool, and having a transversely corded or ribbed surface.
- mentality /mɛnˈtæləti/ (noun) — A mindset; a way of thinking; a set of beliefs.
- prospect /ˈpɹɑspɛkt/ (noun) — The region which the eye overlooks at one time; a view; a scene; an outlook.
- dial /ˈdaɪ.əl/ (noun) — A graduated, circular scale over which a needle moves to show a measurement (such as speed).
- suck /sʌk/ (verb) — To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
- feedback /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ (noun) — Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.
- cavalry /ˈkæ.vəl.ɹi/ (noun) — An individual unit of this arm of service.
- comfort /ˈkʌm.fət/ (noun) — Contentment, ease.
- knife /ˈnaɪ̯f/ (noun) — A utensil or a tool designed for cutting, consisting of a flat piece of hard material, usually steel or other metal (the blade), usually sharpened on one edge…
- butter /ˈbʌtɚ/ (noun) — A soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk).
- slip /ˈslɪp/ (verb) — To lose one’s traction on a slippery surface; to slide due to a lack of friction.
- differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/ (adverb) — In a different way.
- gate /ˈɡeɪ̯t/ (noun) — A doorlike structure outside a house.
- awful /ˈɔːfʊl/ (adjective) — Very bad.
- skill /skɪl/ (noun) — A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- follow up (verb) — To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.
- wait for (verb) — To wait until the specified event occurs.
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- come from (verb) — To have as one's origin, birthplace or nationality.
- come in /ˌkʌm ˈɪn/ (verb) — To enter.
- follow through (verb) — To execute or complete a commitment.
- forget about (verb) — To not think about something or someone, to fail to remember, or to disregard someone or something.
- go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 86 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: sixth /sɪksθ/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, theirs /ðɛɚz/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: profession /pɹəˈfɛʃ.ən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, vacation /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, observation /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: mentality /mɛnˈtæləti/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, statistically /stəˈtɪs.tɪ.kə.li/, mediocre /ˌmidiˈoʊkəɹ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like rep, mentality, prospect.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've had · i've knocked · you've been handed |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are headed · been handed · you've been handed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who get · guys who would · Cross, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.