Dale Dupree — Inside The Sales Rebellion: Bold Creativity, Curiosity, and People Over Products

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast where we share with entrepreneurs and business professionals the mindset, strategies, tactics and frameworks.

To help you level up your game.

And become the best version of you.

When was the last time you were.

Genuinely excited to talk to a salesperson?

Probably never, right?

Most sales processes are boring, transactional, and full of tired scripts like just checking in.

My guest today turned that entire industry.

Gil Dupree spent 13 years in the brutally competitive world of copier sales, a space known for cold calls and quick hangouts.

But instead of playing by the old rules, he created a movement called the Sales Rebellion.

He broke industry records by putting people over products, community over commission checks, and replacing generic pitches with unforgettable experiences.

Whether you're a founder trying to break through digital noise, a team leader looking to inspire your reps, or an entrepreneur ready to stand, today's episode is packed with practical strategies to help you disrupt the status quo and choose legendary.

Please join me for my conversation with Dale Dupre.

Well, hey, Dale, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thanks for having me.

Well, I'm excited about this.

You're a sales coach and trainer and after my own heart, you know, I've been at it a long time and I love to see that people with winning strategies, tactics for frameworks, evolving it.

And you've really done a great job.

And we're going to be talking the website's thesales rebellion.com but I want to talk about your tactics.

I want to talk about your approach.

I want to talk about how you've seen the evolution of selling, how it's evolved because you've been at it now for probably close to 20 years, I think professionally.

And let's, let's go back to high school.

Dale, you're in high school.

Where are you living and what do you want to be when you grow up?

In high school, I'm so, I'm homeschooled.

I'm in Orlando, Florida.

I'm actually starting my first band in a garage with a couple of my friends.

And I'd been playing music for a few years prior to at this point with like my cousin in his garage, but nothing real serious.

But now I'm dreaming of being a musician and touring and writing albums and getting on a major record label, which actually cut like my, my college years completely out because I, I pursued that lifestyle of playing music all the way through my senior year and ended up getting signed to a major record label and making music, my profession from about 17 years old and until about 21, 22, really.

I would know.

What was your instrument?

Are you probably a guitar player?

Did you have chops too?

My dad played the guitar and so I learned the guitar as well.

But I had the.

Just the innate ability to play music, if you will, Slash.

Understand rhythm, understand the art.

So I stood on a drum set even though I, I suck.

I'm.

I'm not that good.

I could play with you.

I could play in the church band.

That's how I used to joke, like, yeah, I can play in the church, man, that's not a problem.

But like, I wrote some of the riffs.

I was very fun in the studio, if you will, or during the writing process because I had a big personality and a big opinion.

So there was lots of, hey, let's try this, let's do that.

I got very involved with all the instruments, but main instrument of the band was that I sang.

I was the vocalist.

Smart.

Well, if I had to do it all over again, I think I would have gone into music.

I, you know, I. I never really was that talented.

My dad was professional musician, played with all the big bands back in those days and 40s and 50s.

So I grew up with music, just never had the skill set.

But what's nice about music is you learn structure.

And I think if you've been trained and you've had any kind of training whatsoever, that kind of structure goes into our.

Ourselves.

It's math, really.

I mean, music to me.

And so how did that then evolve?

So you're going along in your career, you decided, okay, the band, the music career lasted for a little while.

Something obviously happened that decided to get into business and you started to get into a career of selling.

Unpack that one for us.

Pretty simple, although weird.

My.

My father actually started a copier sales and service organization in the.

In the 80s.

1984.

And then I was actually born in 1985.

So lucky for me, I had toner coursing through my bloodstream when I came out of the womb and was just destined to sell copy machines.

It's kind of just that simple.

So I made my way back after spending 4, 5, 6 solid years playing music, dealing with the drama, dealing with the drugs, the alcohol, the promiscuity.

And ultimately, even though I was just like as any other human would be very susceptible to those things, I was also able to put the right head on my shoulders, if you will, and make the decisions that were necessary in order to get myself out of that stuff.

Is kind of the bottom Line, which is what I did.

I just, I left and I started selling.

Well, that's kind of goes with the culture and with the different bands and it's a demanding life and times have changed for sure.

I think you were probably at the peak of it because it started going downhill.

You know, it's interesting you mentioned copiers because I know your firm and your dad's company.

You guys were Xerox dealers back in those days.

And I started my training career.

Kind of like what you're doing.

You're as old as my eldest daughter and she was born in 85, but actually Xerox was one of my first clients and they had a program called PFS or PFS, professional selling skills.

PFSs, I guess.

And so your dad probably had that program that was something done on a national level.

So you started to come in and work for your dad or working within the organization.

But you didn't just, you know, get there from a nepotism point of you had some ability too because you, you killed it.

You were crushing it.

What was your thinking at that time?

Okay, I'm going to get into sales.

Was it a temporary role for you or did you have a longer term perspective of it?

So my dad actually sold Konica Minolta.

His original gig was Kyocera Mita, which is sharp technically.

Right.

They were like the color version of, of Kyocera, if you will.

But he did.

It's funny that you mentioned Xerox because he did.

He trained for Xerox all over the United States because he was so good at selling.

And it wasn't a whole lot of training.

But it's.

I never knew that up until after my father passed away.

Actually I found out that information and actually it was like way after I even started this company and I happened to be with one of like his really old friends who was like, man, just crazy that you're out training coffee.

Your guys.

You know, your dad did that for like two or three years like on the side while he was, you know, selling.

And I, I was like, what?

But that generation would have been fud.

That's what my dad learned.

And he hated it.

Yeah, so, so what's interesting about that, that timeline.

And then what I learned from my father was I learned a whole different methodology of selling, if you will.

And that methodology being relationships first, curiosity at the forefront, everything being about the value add ultimately, especially like back in the 80s and 90s when my dad was really developing his business.

So walking away from business was highly acceptable to my Father just dependent on the fit, not trying to force things, but finding the right folks.

And so when I jumped in with him, it was kind of already a natural state of where I lived, if you will.

Yeah.

So it was easy for me to lean into his methodology of very non traditional selling in such a very blood in the water, sharks in the water type of sales structure that most people sold through.

So like, so I'm in this territory, there's 22 other people per se.

That's the number that I usually use that I'm up against in like every single sale.

And these guys are just like racing to the bottom and just doing all the craziest things you could possibly imagine.

The way they're trying to get people to sign paperwork by agreeing to an appointment, by like signing a signature on a piece of paper.

Like just crazy stuff, man.

And then there was me, where my father was teaching me transparency.

I was showing people the fine print of lease agreements which was like a big no, no, don't show people that, that's crazy.

They' if you see all the things we put in here.

And my dad just treated the sales cycle much differently because that I treated it much differently as well too.

And I stood out so well.

Well, it's a tough day.

And what was interesting about that industry, I worked with a lot of the different companies, Pitney, Bowes, Minolta, Canon, some of the different companies, just as a sales training organization.

And they seem to close most of their deals just in the last week of the month.

It was always like that.

Last week of the month is when 89.

Which drove a sales manager nuts just because they did it.

Now you spent 13 years, I think in, in copier sales.

So it's a space famous for cold calls, quick hangups, and you became legendary.

What was the moment you realized that traditional sales tactics were broken and what did you replace them with?

Yeah, so I, I, I completely broke the script altogether.

My first two years were still not the greatest, if you will, even though I had a better upbringing around the sales tactics that I used, if you want to even call them that.

But I still sucked in the early stages, trying to find my voice, my authenticity, my, my knack, if you will, where I fit in, who I fit in with.

And I was trying to force my, you know, the round peg into the square hole way too many times kind of thing.

And it was, it was an interesting time in my life.

Lots of learning, lots of failure.

And in those first two years I had so much growth and self development for myself.

I didn't know what to do with it, to be quite frank with you.

But the one thing that was very clear is I needed to differentiate myself.

So I built a personal brand, first and foremost called the Copier Warrior.

And I, like, got props.

So I had a sword, I had hats that said Copier Warrior on them.

With me, like swinging the sword.

I mean, I went all in.

And all of a sudden, in these traditional sales cycles of banging the phone and knocking on the door and leaving a business card and a 50 page brochure and a cut sheet, and I was taking people like toner bottles that were half exploded with notes that were like, I can fix this for you, and bricks to throw at their copy machines.

And it's pretty wild time.

And I used a lot of pretty intense methodology overall in order to get people's attention and give them an experience unlike anybody else was giving them.

No.

Well, I think you moved it.

And you were kind of ahead of yourself because you moved from pitching products to focus on the human being across the desk from you.

So you shipped from commoditized vendor to a trusted advisor, which is where we're trying to educate and get people to go to today.

Like, trusted advisor is going to show them all the ins and outs, the nuances, the clauses that they should be worried about, what should be there, all of those types of things.

Well, you're famous for your audacious outreach, for sure, like the crumpled letter technique or how entrepreneurs can break through today's overwhelming digital noise without coming across as gimmicky.

Can you unpack some of those for us and give us some of the top performers?

What worked?

Well?

Yeah, I learned from some pretty tight circles this idea of the gimmick, which I have nothing against.

I just ultimately, it's not really, like authentic to me.

And how I sell is the idea.

And some people think of my stuff as gimmicks too, and I totally accept that and understand that perception.

But what I learned was like sending people shoes and telling them, now that I got a foot in the door, can I get a meeting?

Which is incredibly clever and really fun.

But I wanted to build.

There were three things.

I'll tell you my exact formula.

The first is nostalgia.

Attached to nostalgia.

What I was trying to create is familiarity or moments that they can rationalize and reason through because they've experienced them to some capacity.

Nostalgia is attached to that just because at the base, or the foundation, if you will, of how I build out my experiences, I want people to have an emotion of familiarity and in most cases, when you can tap into nostalgia, you create a very memorable moment for people within that.

The second piece of all that is curiosity and not cleverness.

Okay?

The goal here is to really drive someone to say, I gotta keep experiencing this, or I need to get to the end or I should reach out because I want to know more is the concept.

And the difference between that, to me and, like, being clever is it's exactly like I just said.

It's you send a shoe.

That's clever.

Maybe I'll take an appointment, maybe I won't.

But if I can create a moment of undeniable curiosity in a human, they'll say yes 99% of the time.

Even.

Even if they say yes with a caveat like, hey, I'll talk to you or I'll meet with you, but I have no need for what you sell either.

At this moment.

They want to know.

Yeah, they want.

They truly do.

So the third piece of that is that everything to me has got to always be diy, if you will, or created is the concept, right?

So.

So I never wanted to just simply go buy a shoe that somebody else made.

I wanted to, like, sit in my lab, right?

Put some glue to some stuff and, you know, I spend my time on it and really commit intentionally to those moments.

Well, they've forgetting attention.

I think it works.

You know, I remember one time when I first got clued into this.

This is why I love.

I was delighted to have you come on the show is one day, and this was over a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago.

I get a FedEx and open up the FedEx, and there's a $50 bill in it.

And it's from a sales guy who wants 20 minutes of my time.

And he goes, hey, I know your time's worth a lot more than this, but at least have lunch on me or whatever.

I just love 20 minutes of your time.

I want to put my money where my mouth is.

I've got a solution.

I met with the guy, ended up buying from the guy.

But he got my attention.

I didn't want to give back the 50 bucks.

I felt bad.

And he used what I call that trigger of reciprocity.

He gave me something, and it was like, okay, well, I kind of want the 50 bucks.

I don't mind giving him 20 minutes for.

It'll be a nice lunch or two, right?

And take care of it.

I've seen it work with.

I remember we had an oil and gas client that got fired.

A gas, oil and gas services company.

They got Fired by their big oil company, cost them a ton of money.

But they were not looking after the relationships, they weren't looking after the company.

So they hired us, engaged us and said, hey, what can we do?

How can we do it?

So we actually had a tombstone made, an actual tombstone.

And.

And I think it goes to where you're talking about, let's call it, I don't want to use the word gimmick, but authentically on a one to one basis, create something because some things you can work in mass, other things not.

But understand and read your client.

So we sent in the tombstone with the birth of the relationship and the death of it.

And one day and we actually delivered this $2,000 tombstone that was engraved and all done, sorry for the relationship.

And we had a nice little slogan on it.

Then the next day we had all these storks show up.

Then we filled the room with storks, were being delivered with the baby, brand new baby that we're going to now work hard to earn your trust back again and grow that relationship.

The birth of a new relationship.

But it got the attention and they were in the penalty box for a good year.

But then they got back and won the client again.

And so to your point, it's about getting attention.

Another one I remember we had was I found out that somebody does on a personal level you like to fly fish.

So I contacted a fly fishing shop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Found the floor, five top flies that were well known.

I put these on a little card and I sent it to them.

Just saying what these do for your trout?

Because they had the brand of that and it was not expensive.

We can do for your or you know, blah blah, blah.

And they pick up the phone and they give you phone calls.

So I think it's personalizing on a one to one basis.

And with LinkedIn, I mean do you have any strategies for.

LinkedIn tells people's personal, their interest, who they like to read.

We got a trove of information.

How do you discover those kinds of things?

Yeah, LinkedIn is an interesting platform overall.

I've been on it since 2017, posting content every day.

And so I've seen the ups and downs of the platform over the last nine years.

What works, what doesn't.

Just like anybody else that's put the time in.

And I would say two things.

One is that LinkedIn is to some people still kind of like a, a placeholder for their resume or a mini website of selling information, if you will not always can you get onto somebody's LinkedIn and learn things that you can learn about me as an example, there's still a very small group of people that put things that go beyond the surface as information inside of their LinkedIn.

And when it, when it comes to like using LinkedIn for outreach, me personally, I think it works the best to cultivate a community more so than a client base.

But really, I think that all businesses, if they were really operating based around what their brand could achieve for them more so than their product or their service, I think everybody would see the alliance of LinkedIn through a different light and that if you approach LinkedIn to be more of a place where people could commune, they can agree with or even disagree with opinions and ideas around specific subjects and topics regarding business and leadership and sales or whatever that you have a big opinion on.

Yeah, I think that it does, it works, I should say wonders for the people on the outside looking in to build that and cultivate that community piece that if I were to pick up the phone and call somebody that's in my comments or who follows me and has been for a few years, and I've seen them like, you know, a few different posts here and there said, hey, this is dale Dupree from LinkedIn.

I don't have to cold call that person.

Yeah, oh, hey.

Usually the kind of response that you get in those moments, you know, So I believe that it can be used as an inbound and an outbound engine.

I believe that it can be used as, through enablement tools like, as a great enrichment tool for data regarding, you know, personal information about people, very deep information about their businesses, what's going on in their business life.

But unfortunately it's still like a hit or miss thing.

You know, what you can really rely on and depend on in 2026 is the very local, communal type concept and how you approach businesses that if you go to like the local luncheon, you're going to meet Tammy or Nick from ABC Company and sure, they may be a representative, but gosh, I mean, you can still get more information from the two of them that you can on the Internet.

You know, like they got a softball team, they, they give to these two charities.

Once a year they have a breakfast for all their clients.

Everybody's invited.

You know, there's just so much information that you can still find by finding that in person, connection with organizations.

And so even though I love LinkedIn and I love the digital realm, I'm, I'm a hater all at the same time, right.

And that I, I just, I am so old school around the idea of human connection and the human experience that I usually tend to just lean into that more so than the digital side.

No, it makes sense.

Well, it's your core philosophy, people over products.

One of the core tenets of the sales rebellion is people over product, community over commission checks.

So how does an entrepreneur scale a business with this mindset when quarterly targets and revenue pressures are looming?

Well, the thing about that is, is that the more that you're focused on profit, the more that you're focused on margin, the more that you're focused on new business, more business, et cetera, the harder it is to achieve those things, quite, quite frankly.

But the more that I'm focused on not selling a copy machine, not selling my services, not winning the deal because I was the lowest price, not worrying so much about my monthly quota and just like cramming as much in as I possibly can, then I don't have to close all my deals the last week of the month, right?

Then I.

And then I don't have to focus so much on this scarcity and this chasing mindset around money and revenue.

And really what I can focus more on is that hey, this is going to take time, it's going to suck at times, we're going to lose money.

But if I can cultivate something very long term that has 200 people that buy from me consistently and spend, let's just say 50 grand a year, that's a lot of money.

I think when people just try to, instead of thinking so much about the margins and thinking so much about like I need a million dollar business, I need a $5 million business, I need a $10 million business.

And instead say I want to do what I love, I want to cultivate community, I want to culture relationships through that, I want to serve others and I do it with excellence.

That if they stay in those core tenants, then it comes back to that piece, that quote that you just read, which is that people are more important.

And sure, like at some point that definitely changes for you in regards to those same people that you place on a proverbial pedestal from a service standpoint, they will give you money.

Man, I really like your approach and how you can continually to nurture a relationship as well.

You know, a question I'll ask.

Matter of fact, I detail in one of my books where I met with this engineer, big engineering firm.

It was an important gig.

But the guy I'm talking to in the meeting, he's just stone faced great poker player, I can't read him I'm thinking, boy, he just wants me out of here.

And I call this the Columbo question now.

But we get to the door, and I reach out to shake his hand, and I said, his name is Roger.

I said, roger, when you're not working 12 hours a day, when you're not working 60 hours a week, what do you do for fun?

And he stopped and he said, well, come here, I'll show you.

And he had one of those whiteboards that opens up.

And he opens up the whiteboard, and it was full of mountains and pictures of him on mountains and maps and.

And, well, bingo, I know I got this guy.

And now for the next half hour, he comes alive, and he's talking.

I can see his passion, why he works and most of us work so we can do more of what we love.

I like to fly airplanes.

I like to go fly fishing.

I work so I can do that.

I want to work with, hang out with my kids.

That's why we work.

So anyway, bottom line is, I knew a mountain climber, climbed Everest immediately got in my car, sent him a book from that called Power and Passion from these Everest Climbers.

Then went and checked my CRM database, and I had six other executives into technical mountain climbing.

I called up.

His name was Lori Screslit, first Canadian to ever climb Everest.

And I said to him, hey, how much would you charge me for doing a workshop, technical workshop for mountain climber executives that can hire you?

And he goes, you've supplied the expenses.

You cover the costs.

I'll do it for you.

Phoned up Roger and said, hey, would you be interested in attending?

I had six for six show up.

I ended up landing that contract.

And three months later, I get a call from one of my consultant buddies.

And he said, what did you guys have on Roger?

Jenks, his name was Jenks.

And I said, oh, nothing.

Why?

And he goes, why?

I was in the meeting when you got awarded the contract, and I've never seen a guy so enthusiastic about awarding a contract as he did yours.

And speaking of your company, and I'm going, oh, no, just good stuff.

Like, really, you know, appropriate stuff.

I've seen that time and time again where.

And it's easier.

I'm coming at it from the corporate end of it, but I always like to ask them what they do for fun.

And if you remember the TV show Columbo, he used to get there with a cigar, he'd ask you questions.

He was sloppy.

He'd get to the door and he'd look back and he'd go Dale.

He goes, one more question.

And that was the one that hung you.

And he'd get you.

So I always ask him, what do you do for fun when you're not working 60 hours a week?

And I keep that in the database.

And it could be, you know, with another major corporation.

We talk yoga.

Another one it's whiskey.

Another one it's cigars.

Another.

I always like to know what it is that they like to do.

And that's where I do those gimmicks, if you will, or the I call them high touches.

So things that are exceeding expectations.

I love your idea of nostalgia, something nostalgic that brings them back to the past or something causes them to be curious.

But that's what you're talking about.

You're talking about enhancing a relationship and then using the tools to do it.

Are there some?

Does that make sense to you?

Does anyone unpack there?

No, I think you said it very well.

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And now back to my conversation with Dale Dupre.

Let me ask you this question.

It's really uncovering needs.

Our listeners want to become the preferred choice in their markets and in a negotiation.

How do you move the conversation away from price?

Because today with AI tools, with price whatever towards true value and fellowship.

You talked about value add and I think you're on the right path with that there.

How do you get off of that pricing conversation?

Because that's an issue for so many people.

Yeah, I think that even when you're a preferred provider that you have to still remember that the people that you seek to serve, they operate their business through profit and on a budget.

I just try to tell everybody that in the negotiation stage or the closing stages, it's important not to think of those areas as some kind of process or a workflow even, but to just be very blunt and honest with individuals that, like, as an example, if I sell my time as a coach, I tell a person it's a thousand dollars an hour.

Well, on the other side of listening to that, I mean, you're.

You're looking at me right now.

I mean, I live in the woods, in a.

In a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

And, you know, I have no overhead.

It is, by the way, I have no overhead.

I have no office.

I sure, I have employees.

And sure, we have some software bills here and there, but we're genuinely some of the best at making that affordable.

Like, we don't have a lot of money associated to that.

Or I should say earmark for that thousand dollars an hour that you're giving me.

A lot of that is profit.

If I was to tell you that that was my price.

So if I'm on the other side listening to someone, I really want to sell, but I'm perceiving the cost of something that they're charging me to be kind of extravagant to an example, I'm going to start to eliminate why I should pay that.

That person is kind of the idea.

And so I'm going to say things like, well, I don't really feel like funding Dale's lifestyle and he can do what he wants, and if he can get that kind of money, that's great, but probably not for me.

So this is typically where negotiations take place, is in a person's doubt and ultimately in a place where you have to meet that individual where they are, as opposed to forcing them to meet you.

So if I tell somebody I'm $1,000 an hour, it's not really meeting them where they are, is it?

But if I'm able to have conversations where I can get them to tell me We've got a $20,000 budget this year and I can then build something appropriate, effective, valuable for that amount of money, then there is no negotiation.

There is no race to the bottom.

There is no worry about what the budget looks like.

It's more or less just, hey, well, usually I charge 100 grand, but here's what I could do at 19,800.

And if that's a stretch for you, and ultimately down Here, what I built for you isn't a value to you.

There's no harm, no foul.

I'm not going to be offended.

We can go our separate ways, but most of the time, because of the way that we break that down as sellers and then we meet another person, where they are, if you will, principally, everything works out really well.

No, I agree with you 100% with the price.

I've always worked with premium companies, so never the discounter.

And the question I would ask, and I ask it every time, are you looking for the lowest acquisition costs or are you looking for the best total value?

And most people don't want to look cheap.

If they say, I just want the lowest acquisition costs, I say I'm probably not it.

So let me ask you a couple questions.

What's your budget?

And I'll point you in another direction.

And I take it away from them immediately.

Or they say, we're looking for the best total value.

And I said, terrific, Then what's the outcome that you're looking for?

The other thing I like to do is I like to $.

So if you told me a thousand an hour, what I would in my mind right away is I want to use your own currency.

So in our world, and you would get this, as a musician, we call our speaking and training gigs.

I know you probably still call it, I get a gig.

And we're.

I'm a wannabe musician, so we, we definitely just call my gig.

But what I do now is I use that currency.

So let's say you made mountain bikes.

I would say to you, figure out your mountain bikes, how much you charge for, how many are you currently doing.

And just so in one hour I could help you sell 10% more mountain bikes, I've now quantified what that hour is worth.

What would that be worth doing?

If your bikes are at $8,000 apiece and you're making 5,000 in profit margin or 4,000 on the bike, whatever.

You got the math on that.

You've got 30, $40,000.

My thousand all of a sudden becomes insignificant.

So I always like to use their currency.

When I work with oil companies, I use barrels of oil because they understand that they get that where money sometimes is a tough one.

Do you have any strategies along that line?

In other words, in your mind, does that make sense and anything else that might add to that one?

Yeah, I mean, I look at budget very simply, that there's a lot of people that can't afford what you want them to pay.

And for every single person that can afford what you want them to pay.

Deeply down into that number, there is someone that will.

And so an abundance mindset, I think, is the most important thing that, for me, a tactic or a workflow inside of negotiating with people.

I think the line we tend to walk is the persuasive or manipulative tactic inside of our communication.

I love to just tell a person, hey, up front, we're about 20 grand for this particular service.

You can tell me right now if that's too much money, and we can figure out whether or not there's another place for you to fit.

But ultimately, it's okay if you're not able to pay that amount inside of the project that you're looking to achieve.

I just want you to know up front before we get started and you get super excited about everything that you're about to see, and then think to yourself, oh, shoot, I can't pay that.

It helps us both with this next 15 to 25 minutes.

I love the idea of just being blunt and honest.

And there's plenty of people out there that have $150,000 budget for training.

And look, we don't really do as much training as we teach people the creative side of outbound, and we do it for them.

So in most cases, what a company hires us to do is, A, to teach their people how to essentially understand our creative mindset, but B, to trigger and turn on our mail room for them to start sending those crazy, wonky concepts that we talked a little bit about earlier that are giving relevant and familiar experiences to people that are causing them to stop in their tracks.

And remember a guy named Max.

And so when Max calls and says, hey, this is Max at ABC company.

I sent you that little trash can in the mail.

Wanted to see if you got it.

That in tandem with me teaching Max these interrupt concepts.

But ultimately, this creativity and this human approach to sales, I'm also fulfilling for those same people.

And I think what happens is that most people see very quickly that we don't really change anything in the way that they present themselves or communication styles.

I mean, you could stumble right through that first call.

But what they do notice is the way that they're received differently.

Yeah.

And it causes people to think different.

They start thinking less about how can I use shield tactics or how can I persuade people as much as they start to think, wow, if I can just give a really good experience and be very, like, blunt with my experience, that people most likely will change course.

As an example, just to anybody listening, it's like, well, what is, what does that look like if you have a prospect that's not responding to you?

One of the most favorite and now most famous things that I've come up with is an empty donut box that back in 2011, 2010, I constructed for the first time out of pure frustration with a client that had ghosted me for the third or fourth freaking meeting in a room, set it on my calendar.

I went all the way to their office, waited in their waiting room for 30 plus minutes and was told they're not going to make it.

And on that third, fourth trip, I went to Dunkin Donuts, bought a dozen donuts.

I gave all of the donuts to the reps at my office, the technicians in my office.

I crumbled up a little piece of one and stuck it down in the bottom and smeared the icing and I took.

Was looking for a red Sharpie and couldn't find one.

And actually somebody that works in my office had red lipstick at the time.

And I wrote in the most unhinged font in red lipstick, hey, I ate these donuts waiting for you to meet with me because they were going stale.

Sorry.

It was kind of like the message, right?

And I delivered that and I heard back from that guy literally in the parking lot when I was leaving his office after he told his friend to ask to tell me that he couldn't meet.

Right.

And it was a very blunt way to be honest with somebody in a way that's still human and has a little bit of empathy attached to it and ultimately is real, you know, so.

I think the authenticity is the the and pull off, which actually raises a good question.

So a lot of our listeners and entrepreneurs, they are trying to break through that noise and a lot of times they'll make one pitch and they're done.

They don't have anything.

So I, you know, we try and encourage them to really qualify your client.

But let's say you've got somebody really, really qualified.

Is there a budget range, in other words?

Let's say we want to use your Rebel as a service and I think you called it ras, where you will handle that fulfillment based on obviously the sale price.

So if something's a thousand dollar item, a $20,000 item, or whatever the case is, that acquisition cost, what's a good rule of thumb?

And what kinds of things can they do within a certain budget?

And what, what would be the, I would call it, let's call it the close rate or the confirmation rate.

Like what have you seen be, you know, before new client comes on board, they start doing some things to gain attention with highly qualified leads.

And then what are some of the outcomes?

What are the transformations that you see?

Yeah, I can very bluntly tell you that we on a low end, we charge about 40 to $45 per mailed item.

And then we typically recommend people pick anywhere between 75 and 150 prospects.

And it's a very low number.

And then the goal is over the course of the next 90 to 120 days to elicit a response from 100% of that group.

And now the response rates go anywhere between at the lowest, about 30% and at the highest, about 70, 75% at this stage when executing these concepts for people that we serve.

But regardless, like your cost of acquisition, just depending on like if you're selling a subscription for $99 a year, we're not a good fit.

If you sell something that makes you $5,000 per sale, it's very low cost of acquisition if you think about it.

And really what we tell people is so on that low end, it'll work on some of the most hard to reach people.

But what we tell folks is that if you're willing to pay a little bit more per item, we'll build something that's very brand centric to what it is that you're putting out into the ecosystem of the B2B space.

How you want people to perceive you, brand colors, brand recognition.

But ultimately everything is wired around the experience.

So we don't throw your logo on everything.

It's a highly curated touchpiece meant for the 75, 150, 200 people that it goes to.

And that's why they're impactful and that they work.

And we get such a high response rate because, I mean, even our, some of our working groups right now we're like at a 17% response rate, which will get up to 25, 35%, you know, at some point in the future before the contract is up.

Right.

But even in those low numbers, I mean, most of those people were getting 3 to 5% returns on outreach.

And that's cold calling, cold email, the traditional mediums, if you will, and using a lot of volume, so burning through their tam, you know, just kind of like disrupting their own marketplace, if you will, in a bad way.

So how do you get around the.

Some companies, major companies, enterprise, have policies against, you can't give something, you can't even give a mug with your logo on it.

And I love the way you phrase it from an interrupting point of view.

So to me, like for instance, I use books because I'm working with the C level.

I love to get the latest books, the business books, whatever they are.

And I'll send that, maybe it's one I wrote, but I'll usually find something that's top selling author and I'll do a little book summary to it and I'll send the CEO executive with my card inside.

So it's really about the book.

So I'm not branding or using something along those lines.

And usually you can get a phone call, at least get a conversation for a meeting or a reference or I'm using a connection to get to a connection.

Do you run into that when it comes to, hey, there are certain things that we can do that just bypass all scrutiny.

It gets on their desk and you know, they're laughing about it or they go, hey, this is cool.

Yeah, I'm going to give this guy 30 minutes.

Whatever they're requesting.

Yeah.

So I sold into government for a very long time, as you probably know.

Yeah.

And the vertical of even like the defense and aerospace world and anybody that's a contractor with the government there, you know, I sold copiers to the world's largest privately held tank and gun museum that also happened to be a manufacturer of weapons for the United States military and other weapons, if you will, for other militaries across the world.

And you're right, you can't send somebody a gift.

That's the literal verbiage.

People cannot receive an item that can be perceived as a gift.

So instead of a box of donuts as an example used earlier, if I send an empty box with a note inside that says, hey, I bought these donuts for our first meeting, but it's been like six months and I've, I've been met with nothing but your voicemail and it looks like you blocked me in your emails, so I had to eat these because they were going stale.

But I hope to connect with you soon.

Then I'm on that person's radar.

Like.

Yeah, yeah, that too.

I'll be at the gym for the next three weeks working this off, but hopefully I'll get to chat with you at some point.

Well, I think again, it's coming up with some different ideas.

I remember seeing one of our sales ladies worked for our organization, trying to get in, they were getting going and this is before all the technology, before emails even.

And she sent a beautiful fork that was all done, had it engraved and she sent a little thing, said, I want your business so bad.

I can taste it.

And she got a phone call, she got a phone call back again.

So it was kind of novel, but it's finding something that maybe that they can relate to.

How do we overcome the fear of audacity?

You know, many founders, sales professionals, struggle with the fear of rejection or they worry about looking unprofessional and trying bold sales ideas.

How do you help reps across, you know, across that bridge to choose Legendary.

So those guys and girls have to help themselves.

It's not my decision to make, unfortunately for all of us, because if it was my decision, we'd all be doing it right.

It's kind of the bottom line, but yeah, because it is something that is so unique but beneficial.

But the benefit is not understood until experienced.

And most people don't want to have that as an experience under their belt because they fear it.

So I, I, I think it's less of a fear of audacity as well.

And it's more of a self conscious thing.

It's more of a, what will this person think of me?

It's more of a, whoa, what if they tell my company something and they fire me?

It's like it's a lot of things webbed up into the mind that just cause congestion in general and it hard to think clearly about the concept.

What I tell people that are listening, that are thinking to themselves, I could never send an empty donut box, is that I've secured billion dollar accounts with CFOs that are untouchable in most people's minds by being more audacious than you.

And so if you're tired of silence being the soundtrack of your sales career and you're sick of being stuck in places that you've been stuck in for generations, even that you gotta look at something like what we do and think to yourself, am I willing?

More so than anything else.

And not what could Dale say to convince me?

Because I'll tell you right now, I won't.

And it's not my job.

What my job is, is to shake the hands of the people that walk over our threshold and say, I'm willing to take this, do this.

That's, that's what we do.

And so until people have chosen to overcome that fear, then I can't help them choose.

Legendary.

I get it.

It's that old, what will people think of me?

I mean, I remember launching this podcast.

I fought it for several years.

I'm going, oh, it's going to suck.

You know, we're on season seven now and it's our Response has been great, it's been a great tool and it's a learning curve.

Obviously there's a big learning curve, but I think it's the key is to, you know, find something that gets attention.

How do we break through all that noise?

Are there organizations or companies where it doesn't work?

In other words, don't do this, don't use these strategies in this business.

Or are there some good rules of thumb that, you know, smaller the company do this, bigger the company, are there, are there kind of like some guiding principles?

It's a great question.

So there, there isn't anything that we recommend that you don't use for one and that you do use for another.

But strategically, if we're to meet people where they are, like if I'm trying to sell to IT professionals, an example, and I incorporate dusty Cheeto fingers from late night snacking and energy drinks, trying to wake yourself up at 2 in the morning for an emergency hack on your network, then you will find a familiar moment in that and I will invoke the recognition of nostalgia, if you will, to some extent.

So there's definitely a strategy behind the art.

Yeah, but at the same time we tell everybody, you know, don't overthink that part of the process.

I mean, that's why people hire us a, because we have the experience to be able to say, well, here's what we've done with those particular groups that you're talking about consecutively to make something work.

But at the same time, I've seen everything work to some extent.

So well, we spend all kinds of money and budget on trinkets and trash, which, you know, if you give me a water bottle with your logo on it, I'm not going to use it.

You give me a jacket, I'm not going to wear it.

And I find pushback all the time on that stuff.

It's nice, but I'll hand it off and give it to somebody.

If you give me one that's framed clear, I think it's practical.

I'm going, okay, got my attention.

Or maybe something inside it, you know, that gets my attention.

So that makes sense to me.

Let's talk about.

So basically get over the what will people think of me?

Because the worst case scenario is no.

It's kind of like asking the pretty girl out.

You know, in college I found that, you know, no one asked the pretty girls out there.

Was scared of the rejection.

Guys had no game today.

They swipe right.

So they're terrible at it.

But in my day, and probably Your too.

We had to, hey, make the approach and face that possible rejection.

But at least people know you, right?

And people would know you that way.

So I've seen all kinds of different things and calculators and all kinds of, let's call them gimmicks or gifts or what do you call them?

Attention getters?

Do you have a generic term for them?

Yeah, we call them devices is really what we call them.

And I stole that right.

From Stu Hynek, my mentor.

We call them devices and experiences.

Those are the two ways that we identify them.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

Well, let's talk about the experience over the pitch.

You talk about giving an experience rather than performing a pitch.

What does an experience driven discovery call look like in practice?

So the concept looks like this in a nutshell, and I'll do this in 30 seconds, is if I'm doing the dog and pony show and I'm selling copy machines, which, by the way, this still happens, even if it happens digitally.

People still want to see, like, the function of a machine, believe it or not, in 2026.

Right.

A demo is what we used to call them.

Right.

So if you come into my office and you're coming to see my product, there's two tracks.

There's the track that, like everybody else runs on, which is, here's the features, here's the advantages, the benefits, here's this, here's that.

So bring one of your jobs in, you know, and these are all.

All well and dandy, but how do I stand out from the other 22 people that I'm selling against if I sound exactly the same?

So an experience is.

Is that they come in and that first and foremost, there's always.

So our owner, Steve Klopp, he did a great job at.

He always had chocolate chip cookies ready to go.

And, you know, he'd say that the famous North American Caron Alley chocolate chip cookies, they were really just famous.

Amos is what they were.

But so you'd come into, like, warm, sugary goodness and you'd do a tour of the office.

But the difference between our tour of the offices is that we had the employees very interactive with people.

And so the concept was like, you walk to a wall and you can see all 100 employees and their top five things they wanted to experience in life.

And just like, very int.

Ultimate communication, if you will, through the experience.

But then imagine you come to the demo room instead of the typical dog and pony show that, you know.

And this is.

I encourage people to do this all the time.

In 2026 especially.

But imagine like the first thing you show somebody is the copy machine jamming instead of it like working.

Because the jam is what everyone experiences but no one wants to really talk about.

Right?

Yeah.

So when it does.

When it does.

Not if it does, it's when it does.

Yeah.

So if I can just take people to that emotional place in a few different ways and a few different experiences.

My favorite being, again, the.

Let's have the machine jam and show someone how to clear it and actually have them do the clearing and ask them, hey, was that much different than your current machine?

What are your thoughts?

A whole nother conversation.

No, it's brilliant.

I actually saw a copier guy one time and this is going back back when things weren't so politically correct and he had, based on the machine, he had different copies of the butt or of somebody's butt and showing the clarity of the butt.

So this was done on this machine.

This was done for your best, but this was it.

And it was all buts and pictures of butts.

And then of course, this was prior to color, you know, thank goodness.

But anyway, it's, it's, it's really about breaking that attention and getting that, getting that through there.

Last question I have for our time's moving.

Quick navigating industry gatekeepers.

Gatekeepers are usually viewed as that obstacle and how do we get past?

So how does the sales rebellion approach, you know, from a training and coaching point of view, gatekeepers differently to build some momentum in an organization?

Yeah, that the number one way that we approach it differently is we don't even use the term.

We tell people two things.

One is the power of words.

So if we call somebody, you know, the window witch or the gatekeeper, we're like immediately creating a negative moment for ourselves more so than anybody else.

They're never going to know that we called them these things.

But.

But I promise it will have a negative outcome on the result.

Totally.

You get it.

So, so if I start with words matter and that this person is more important than kind of how we label them, that you never know.

This could be the aunt of the owner.

It could be a, a, an intern that got so good at their job that they became very close knit to the organization and are trusted, you know, in more ways than we realize.

Like there's a lot of different ways that the front desk person, reception greeter, whatever we're calling them these days can really benefit us because they know they have the pulse of the organization.

They know everything.

So if I can Help this person have the same type of experience that I'm trying to give to Kevin or Ashley or whoever is my contact at that organization and treat that person like an equal and ultimately just ask for help through that process, that they will think of us differently through that experience, and they will help us greatly in our conquest of new business and trying to find new people to serve.

No, it makes sense.

I do a little Thanks a latte.

So I'll ask help.

I'll call up the receptionist and I'll just sit there and I'll go, they don't know that.

We don't know who it is.

So if I was calling up from, I'm going to meet the executive Dale Dupre, I'd go, hey, it's Michael Vickers calling with Summit Learning Systems.

Hey, how's it going?

Good morning.

Hey, we want to do something special for Dale.

We don't know if he's got a birthday coming up or a special event.

We want to do something unique, but we don't want to tell him, and we want to surprise him.

And I said, we're kind of looking at anything personally that you're aware of, that he's.

Any hobbies or something that he just loves, he's passionate about.

We just really want to do.

They don't know that there's been an existing relationship or not an existing relationship.

And literally 90% of the time they go, oh, yeah, he's into this, or, yeah, well, he's restoring a Aston Martin automobile, or he's into old classic cars, or he's into.

And then we send her a thank you, a thanks a lot date so she can go redeem it at a Starbucks or favorite coffee shop, which we can do.

And we have an automated process for that.

And then we'll go and actually do the homework.

And we get phone calls back.

And I've literally landed some huge contracts just by finding out what it is that they do for fun.

What is it that they're hot?

Because again, we're working to do more of what we love to do.

If we had all the money in the world, we might not be working.

So any other strategies on figuring out, hey, what's the.

This one's going to knock them dead?

Or is it just trial and error and go, let's try this approach.

Is there something as simple that they can do, listeners do that?

Maybe hand out to them and say, because I will.

They can go to your website.

They can find out all the different things that you do, who's the right kind of customer for you.

And what would be something if they can't quite afford you at this point, what could they do in the meantime?

Yeah, no, I think you nailed the perspective of really just trying to delight people.

Is really that the concept, the core concept of the Rebellion?

I believe there's more power in delighting a person than there is and making them feel like they're a tool or they're part of your sales process.

But delighting is something that we can all, from a human experience standpoint, get behind.

So I just encourage people to think that if, if they're trying to delight the people that they seek to serve, they're going to have better outcomes.

And those are the people that we work with the best, or the people that they don't fear audacity or the idea of being different, but they also don't look at it as some kind of shortcut or even a strategy.

But they see it as like, you know what, this just makes sense from the perspective of what's normal and natural that we've gotten so far away from in the business world that we can tap back into through our organization and partnering with somebody like the sales rebellion.

That's, that's really what makes our, our best fit.

Oh, perfect.

Hey.

Well, Dell, this was certainly insightful.

Lots of great things in here and value that people can use.

I know they can reach you on LinkedIn, but the website is thesalesrebellion.com and by the way, you've got, I mean, you're approaching a hundred thousand followers and connections on LinkedIn.

They always want to know because we do talk about that.

What's been the secret of getting that and scaling that the day?

Look, I have never really subscribed to a strategy or any kind of scaling and I didn't know I was going to be where I am today to any capacity, nor was I really pushing for it.

I just simply believed in something bigger than myself.

And I used that belief system to motivate me on a daily basis to do the things that are necessary from a hard work standpoint.

And also, I think it's very important that people understand that social media is a living place.

It's an ecosystem.

It has an algorithm that is very intelligent, that understands what it's doing.

And even if it frustrates you, it knows it's frustrating you, I promise you.

And, and it's less of playing the games of the algorithm or falling victim to the algorithm and more of, well, don't forget that the, the social media world is developed for people.

It's for people to come to, to feel connected, to find information, to build a community.

And if you can tap into that part of people, the way you write, not just your own post too, or the comments that you respond to on your post, but other people's writing, other people's thoughts, other people's expertise.

The more that you can tap into this idea of being brilliantly yourself, yeah, the further you'll get on those platforms.

That message comes louder and clearer.

And you obviously practice what you preach.

Sales rebellion.com hey, thanks for doing this Dale.

Really great stuff.

I'm looking forward to following more of it.

And we'll check out your services as well.

So I think you're onto something great there.

Thanks for being here.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Michael as you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is that shifting from product pitching to creating memorable human created experience creates undeniable brand differentiation.

Or maybe it's that front desk, reception and gatekeepers are not obstacles to bypass, but key partners who hold the pulse of the organization and should be treated as equals.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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