Seth Prezant Of Hike Your Sales On Mastering the Art of Remote Selling in a Post-Pandemic World

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

Be Curious

Curiosity is at the heart of sales. Have a genuine desire to uncover your prospects’ pain-points. Ask open-ended questions, practice actively listen with the intent to understand. Only then, you can start guiding a “potential buyer” to the right solutions. The takeaway: In sales, it is always more important to be interested than interesting.

The global pandemic has forever altered the landscape of sales, propelling us into the era of remote selling. Today, businesses and sales professionals face the challenge of connecting with clients and closing deals without the traditional in-person interactions. Mastering the art of remote selling has become not just an advantage but a necessity. From leveraging technology and digital tools to building trust and rapport over virtual platforms, the skills required for effective remote selling are evolving. I had the pleasure of interviewing Seth Prezant.

Seth Prezant is the CEO & Founder of Hike Your Sales, LLC. A sales training and community platform that helps sales organizations and their teams build the confidence, mindset, good habits, and skills to hit quota and succeed in sales. Seth recently summited Mount Kilimanjaro with his son and is a passionate about exploring the world around him.

Thank you for joining us. To start, could you share your “origin story” with our readers? How did you begin your career? What challenges did you face in the early days? How did you overcome them?

My first taste of sales literally happened in the 5th grade. I had an idea to snatch all the mangos within reach of our neighbors’ hanging trees and sell them to the local grocery store. My best friend and I collected 47 mangos. We ate two on the way to the store. Walked in with sticky mango juice on our faces and asked to speak to the manager. After intense negotiations we walked out with $15.00 and a life-long love of sales!

Since the great mango heist, I have sold everything from wood screws to commercial properties. Sales has come relatively easy to me, but following a traditional career path or corporate rules have always been a challenge.

In high school I worked part-time at The Gap. Clothing had to be meticulously folded and arranged on the shelves. I noticed customers would hesitate picking up the neatly folded apparel. So I experimented with a display of Rugby Shirts (popular in the late 80’s) by literally unfolding and tossing them randomly on the display shelf. Suddenly, customers would walk in and gravitate right towards the messy pile. They had no problem grabbing the disheveled shirts, feeling the material, and trying them on. Within a week, I was the top salesperson in the store.

Early on I understood that sales is sensory, emotional, and not perfectly organized the way most organizations prefer. If something wasn’t working I’d experiment, try new things, even if it gets a little messy. Most companies don’t like that but my personal success in sales always came from being disruptive, finding my own path, and leveraging the power of human nature.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The “Little Red Book of Selling” by Jeffery Gitomer. This was the first sales book that resonated with me and that I read with excitement, thinking….it all makes sense! The book is about ethical selling. It outlines the basics of sales and human nature in a very simple way, without frameworks or methodologies. It was first published in 2004 and is just as relevant today. I re-read it often to keep me grounded and to remind me that if you master the basics, you will achieve great results.

Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?

“Man plans and God laughs” as my grandmother use to say. This quote is a reminder that no matter how much we want something, how hard we try, or how much we plan, we are not in total control. You still need to put in the preparation and hard work, but detaching yourself from the outcome has allowed me to be effective in sales, be mindful, and to show up in life, in a more relaxed and authentic way.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I never waited for success to start helping others. In fact, helping make the world a better place has always been part of my definition of success. When I founded my education science company in 2007, I was able to share the wonders of science to over one million students. Some who have grown to become doctors, engineers and cancer researchers.

As a sales leader for a fortune 500 company, I was fortunate to help change lives. One new hire had no sales experience, and I later learned, no car or home. She was sleeping on a friend’s couch with less than $80 to her name. Within 18 months, she was earning enough from sales to rent her own place, buy a car, and own something that can never be taken away…the ability to sell. Inspiring and teaching others was the reason I launched Hike Your Sales Training and Community, a place where sales organizations and their teams come to build confidence, mindset and the skills to be successful in sales.

And my own personal success in sales has afforded my family and I the ability to help others. Recently, my son and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. We did it, in part, to raise money and awareness for a non-profit organization called Hope4. They improve the lives of those affected by the poverty, trafficking, and hunger in Moldova and Ukraine and we were able to be part of that.

Ok, let’s now turn to the central part of our interview. In your experience, how has the transition to remote selling altered the traditional sales cycle, and what strategies have proven most effective in closing deals virtually?

Traditional sales were once seller led and seller guided. The transition to remote selling has put the buyer in the driver’s seat. Today, it’s mostly buyer led and seller guided. According to Propeller CMR, 82% of customers will view 5 or more content items from a company before making a purchase. Business LinkedIn reports that 55% of buyers use LinkedIn to support their decisions when making a purchase.

Selling strategies today must include social selling, content creation, and consultative selling methods that help support a buyer’s decision. The closing of sale now occurs at the beginning and middle of the buying journey, and not at the very end.

In what ways do you believe technology will continue to shape the future of remote selling, and what tools should sales professionals be focusing on?

The post pandemic tech boom has come with a lot of good, some bad, and a smidge of ugly.

The good: remote selling has increased the creation and use of technology that allows sellers to connect to buyer where they live (Slack, Google MeetUp, LinkedIn), track and manage their entire sales funnel and deal flows (HubSpot, Salesforce), and generate targeted lists of ICPs using intent data intelligence (Apollo, Amplemarket).

The bad: many sellers are using, and relying on, technology to do the thinking and selling for them. AI created email sequences are generated at scale but lack that human soul. Prompted cold emails wreak of ChatGPT breath. Buyers can smell it as soon as it hits their inbox. We must remember people buy from people, and the craving for real human connection has never been higher.

The ugly: selling “at scale” is tipping the scale way over. Buyers are getting flooded with emails, texts, calls, LinkedIn DMs and it’s having a real negative effect across industries. The impersonalization of sales and all-out assault on buyers are creating decision fatigue, which leads to no decision at all.

How can sales teams maintain and build rapport with clients in a fully remote environment, especially when face-to-face interactions are limited?

When I was 10 years old I had a pen pal. We wrote hand-written letters to each other other and established a true friendship without ever meeting. Reflecting back, we built rapport remotely in the same way sellers can do today. Find mutual interests, be curious, ask questions, seek to understand the other person’s world, and don’t expect anything in return. We did this with only paper and pen. Today, sending a voice or video message, through tools like Loom, can help quickly build rapport when face-to-face interactions aren’t an option.

Can you share a story of a challenge you faced in adapting to remote selling, and and how you overcame it?

At the beginning of the pandemic, my entire team was sent home from the office with no playbook on how to run a sales organization from a kitchen table. As my team and I were cooking up strategies for our new reality, I created what I call “The Mighty Four”.

“The Mighty Four” are the key pillars to mastering the art of remote selling and the cohesive glue to keep remote teams in sync:

1. Be Curious
2. Be Intentional
3. Be Tenacious
4. Be Basic

Can you share a success story of a remote sale that exemplified innovative tactics or approaches in the post-pandemic world?

We hired a sales consultant a few weeks prior to the pandemic. Because this was her first sales job, I knew that finding early success would propel her sales career or end it right there. As we got to know each other I learned that her generation, Gen Z, prefers to communicate through videos instead of phone calls. So we came up with a unique prospecting plan relying on video messages. The personalized outreach leveraged her skills and allowed her to be authentic. She exceeded sales expectations and became a top producer in less than two years.

Here is our main question. Could you list and briefly explain “5 Key Strategies for Mastering the Art of Remote Selling” based on your experiences and insights? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

I mentioned the “Mighty Four” pillars above. I created them to help keep my sales team grounded, focused, and unified during the pandemic. Since then I have added one more pillar, which have all proven, over time, to be key strategies for mastering the art of remote selling.

1) Be Curious

Curiosity is at the heart of sales. Have a genuine desire to uncover your prospects’ pain-points. Ask open-ended questions, practice actively listen with the intent to understand. Only then, you can start guiding a “potential buyer” to the right solutions. The takeaway: In sales, it is always more important to be interested than interesting.

2) Be Intentional

You aren’t selling to robots so avoid “sounding” robotic to prospects. Add a human aspect to the monotony of cold calling, mass emailing, and LinkedIn outreach. Setting intentionality by planning your day and for each task you have to tackle is the difference between burnout and success. The takeaway: A dull pencil is better than a sharp mind.

3) Be Tenacious

Sales happens on your prospects timeline, not yours. Sales cycles can be lengthy so having stick-to-it-ness is what makes great sales professionals. Grit can get you through tough times but tenacity will keep you going. The take away: Consistency over intensity.

4) Be Basic

The only magic formula in sales is excelling at the basics: role playing cold calls, planning, sourcing the right contacts, working with a mentor and coach, becoming an industry expert, doing outreach, and following up. If you stick to the basics, you never have to get back to them. The takeaway: Good sales people stick to the basics. The great ones excel at them.

5) Be Extra

The first time I heard the phrase “so extra” was from my daughter. I tend to be that dad who goes the extra mile to make sure the sandwiches are made just right. I give extra thought to buying gifts, planning vacations, and I go out of my way to make sure I am communicating effectively for everyone. Being extra, after all, wasn’t a bad thing. Putting in extra time to know your prospects, extra effort being a resource, extra care in following through, and extra thought when communicating, will likely add extra revenue to your bank account.

The take away: to stand out among the faceless and transactional sellers of today, be extra.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I believe we are passing through this world and have an obligation to leave it a better place than when we first entered. If I can inspire a movement it would be called “Repairing The World”. In every country, culture, community, and family there is a need for repair. We have the tools. We just need to all do our part.

As we wrap up, how can our readers follow your work?

I share many actionable sales tips and strategies on LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sethprezant or you can visit my website at HikeYourSales.co

Thank you for offering such valuable insights into the art of remote selling. We wish you continued success.

About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com