Make It Happen Mondays - B2B Sales Talk with John Barrows

Most reps wait for their company to train them. Justin Jay Johnson paid for his own coaching while broke, $100,000 in debt, and living in his brother’s basement, and that choice has driven every career move since.In this episode, John sits down with Justin Jay Johnson, Co-Founder & CRO at Synopsis. They talk about grit, betting on yourself, and making career decisions with a clear view of the worst case scenario. Justin shares his path from a blue collar background and a first year with one deal that got clawed back to Salesforce, becoming a CRO at 33, building a coaching business, and co-founding Synopsis. He also breaks down the hard lesson from a $15 million deal with Benioff involved and why everyone, from SDR to CEO, is winging it.If you’re a rep waiting on someone else to invest in you, a sales leader weighing your next big move, or someone fighting imposter syndrome in rooms that feel too big, this conversation is for you. You’ll hear why owning the deal beats deferring to titles, how to weigh risk against reward, and why AI only amplifies the habits you already have.Want to build a sales team that can hold its own in the AI era? Visit https://www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You’ll LearnWhy investing in your own training beats waiting for your company, and what a $20 ChatGPT subscription reveals about a rep’s mindset How to quarterback big deals as the account owner instead of deferring to executives when the room feels too big How to make career and deal decisions with the worst case scenario lens and a realistic risk reward ratio Why everyone from SDR to Fortune 500 CEO is winging it, and how that realization helps you push past imposter syndrome Why AI makes great reps better and bad reps worse, and why clear messaging and a tight ICP still matter more than the techJustin Jay Johnson is the Co-Founder & CRO at Synopsis. Coming from a blue collar background as the youngest of five boys, he was the first in his extended family to graduate from college and started in sales selling knives in college. After a rough first year in sales, he moved into tech, joined Salesforce, and later helped scale the sales team of a competing CRM before it was acquired. He became a CRO at 33, then built a coaching and consulting business helping reps and sales leaders break through, before co-founding Synopsis.Connect with Justin Jay Johnson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinjayjohnson/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinjayjohnson/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesoftwaresalescoach/Learn More at Synopsis: Website: https://getsynopsis.ai/John Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution, helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today’s AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrowsCheck out John’s Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packagesJoin John’s Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

Any buyer can now run a prompt five minutes before your call and walk in knowing almost as much as your rep. That should make the rep less relevant. According to Brian Benfer, it makes them more important than ever.In this episode, John sits down with Brian Benfer, CRO at Salesloft, to talk about where the sales rep fits in the AI era, why buyers using AI are ending up in analysis paralysis instead of self qualified, and why AI's real step function gain in sales productivity is opportunity volume, not faster cycles. Brian also shares his path from running a competitive swim program to leading 300 reps through the Citrix acquisition, and what coaching taught him about bringing teams together around one outcome.If you're a sales leader rethinking what to train your reps on, a rep wondering where your value sits now that research is a click of a button, or a CRO leading through mergers and constant AI change, this conversation gives you the three competencies sellers need now, why curious sellers get the truth while scripted sellers lose deals they could have won, and how to build trust in AI recommendations when most leaders don't trust the data underneath them.Want to build a sales team that can hold its own in the AI era? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy the sales rep is more important than ever when buyers using AI get lost in analysis paralysis, and why the martini funnel doesn't match what Brian sees in real dealsWhy curious sellers who let the conversation wander earn trust and get the truth, while sellers with blinders on lose deals they could have wonThe three competencies reps need on top of the fundamentals: business acumen for CFO and CIO conversations, technical acumen, and project management across growing buying committeesWhy AI delivers marginal gains on stage velocity and conversion rate, no change to deal size, and a potential doubling of opportunity volumeHow Salesloft crowdsources AI wins through its AI Ops Factory, and how logging and measuring AI recommendations builds trust when 67 percent of revenue leaders don't trust their AI dataBrian Benfer is the CRO at Salesloft, where he leads go-to-market for the company's AI revenue orchestration platform. He started his career as a competitive swim coach before moving into sales as an SDR at ShareFile, growing into leading a 300 person sales organization through its acquisition by Citrix. He went on to lead global sales at Dude Solutions, helping transform it into Brightly Software and guiding it through its acquisition by Siemens, before joining Salesloft.Connect with Brian Benfer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-benfer-79280b15/Learn More at Salesloft: Website: https://www.salesloft.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesloft/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salesloft YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/salesloftJohn Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution, helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows Instagram: instagram.com/johnmbarrows TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packages Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

Half of your buyers already picked their shortlist before your sales team even knew they existed. The only question left is whether your team knows what they typed in to get there.In this episode, John sits down with Tim Sanders, Chief Innovation Officer at G2 and author of five books including Love Is The Killer App, to talk about why half of all software buyers now start their research inside ChatGPT, how BDRs have quietly become the frontline of business intelligence for companies trying to win AI search, and why the one thing AI still can't replace in a sales rep is domain expertise.If you are in sales, sales leadership, or building a go-to-market team that needs to hold up in the AI era, this conversation gives you a practical way to think about what AI search means for your pipeline, why your BDRs might be sitting on your most valuable data, and how to make sure the human in the deal still has something the algorithm doesn't.Want to build a sales team that can hold its own in the AI era? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy half of all software buyers now start their research inside ChatGPT or Gemini, and are eighty percent through their purchase before a sales rep ever talks to themWhy the BDR, not the AE, has become the frontline of business intelligence for companies trying to win inside AI searchWhy Tim says today's best AE is a sommelier, not a closer, and what that metaphor means for a buyer drowning in AI-generated optionsWhy verifier's law explains what AI still can't be trusted to do in sales outreach, and why domain expertise is the one thing that makes a generalist model usefulTim Sanders is Chief Innovation Officer at G2, where he researches how AI is reshaping B2B buying and helps G2's customers adapt their go-to-market strategy. Before G2, he was Chief Innovation Officer at Upwork and spent years as an executive at Yahoo, following his early career with Mark Cuban's audio net, which became broadcast.com. He is the author of five books, including Love Is The Killer App and Today We Are Rich.Visit timsanders.com to learn more about Tim's work and books.Connect with Tim Sanders: Website: https://timsanders.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanderssays John Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution, helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows Instagram: instagram.com/johnmbarrows TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packages Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

AI didn't kill the sales fundamentals. It just made everyone forget what they actually are.In this episode, John sits down with Kristie Jones, Author and Founder of Sales Acceleration Group, to talk about why the buyer now wants to talk to a human 80 to 90 percent of the way through their own research, why the post-mortem meeting needs to be replaced with a pre-call meeting, and why AI is forcing sales leaders to teach objective judgment for the first time in their careers.If you are in sales, sales leadership, RevOps, or GTM, this conversation gives you a practical way to think about writing a role brief for the AI tools on your team, replacing the post-mortem with a pre-call meeting, testing for objective judgment instead of just tactical skill, and why the old playbook is dead even though playbooks aren't.Want to build a sales team that can think critically in the AI era? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy the buyer now wants to talk to a human 80 to 90 percent of the way through their own research, and what that means for how a rep opens the callWhy the post-mortem meeting needs to be replaced with a pre-call meeting built around objective judgmentWhy every AI tool on your team needs a role brief, the same way every hire needs a job descriptionWhy Kristie tests candidates by making them argue with an AI generated plan live, not just use oneWhy the four skills sales leaders need now are systems thinking, workflow design, decision leadership, and accountability clarityKristie Jones is the Author and Founder of Sales Acceleration Group, where she works with sales organizations on hiring, training, and leadership development. She's the author of Selling Your Way In and the upcoming The Sales Leadership Gap, releasing October 2026, which looks at how AI is forcing a fundamental rethink of how sales leaders hire, coach, and make decisions.Visit kristiekjones.com to learn more about Kristie's work and get updates on The Sales Leadership Gap.Connect with Kristie Jones: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kristiekjones Website: kristiekjones.com Instagram: instagram.com/kristiejones.sales YouTube: youtube.com/@kristiekjonesJohn Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution, helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows Instagram: instagram.com/johnmbarrows TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnmbarrowsCheck out John's Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packages Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter