Read the Room with Rich

Learning how to find the decision maker in a deal is the difference between a close and a no-decision - and most reps never see the person who killed it.Rachit Kataria, co-founder of Centralize, has just raised $15,000,000 led by NEA. In this episode he explains why the people ending your deals are almost never the people you're talking to, and how to find them before they decide without you.The pattern he found building Centralize: it isn't what was said on the call or in the email that predicts a close — it's the from-field. Are you talking to a CRO, a manager, or an IC? You can have ten names on the account, call yourself multi-threaded, and have nobody on the map who can sign anything.Rachit's fix is an AI org chart that shows who's missing rather than who you already know - less a map than a routing engine, closer to Waze than to a CRM.Then Rich turns it around and asks him how he buys. Rachit doesn't answer cold calls, doesn't see cold emails, and doesn't read your case study. What does work: his own reps. If someone he trusts brings him a tool, the conversation happens. That's the whole route in - and it's the same route your buyers are using on you.They also discuss handing off founder-led sales without losing the founder effect, going from AE to exec sponsor overnight, why relationships become the moat once AI commoditises everything else, and the strat seller who rolled Centralize out wall-to-wall at his old company before joining the team.If you've got a deal sitting at 90% and a champion who's gone quiet, this is the episode for you.⏱️ CHAPTERS0:00 The People You Never Met Are Deciding1:59 Inside the $15,000,000 Series A2:25 Why AI Cannot Commoditise Relationships5:48 The Pivot That Created Centralize7:15 The From-Field Insight That Predicts Deals9:26 The AI Org Chart, Explained Simply12:12 Why Relationships Become the Moat14:41 Building a Sales Team After the Raise18:48 The Champion Who Became an Employee24:40 How This Buyer Decides What to Buy25:48 Why He Will Not Answer Your Cold Call30:47 Bottoms-Up Beats Every Exec Email33:07 The Redundancy Test Before He Signs40:22 Where to Find Rachit and CentralizeConnect with Rachit:Try Centralize free: https://www.usecentralize.com/Follow Rachit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachitkataria/Connect with Rich Website: https://www.buyercoding.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhitsgoals/Sponsor the show: [email protected]

Buyer psychology in sales beats buyer personas every time — and this episode breaks down exactly why deals stall when you sell to a job title instead of a decision style.Rich Patterson walks through Buyer Coding: the five buyer types, the discovery questions that reveal them, and how to remove decision risk before a contract ever hits the table.Most sellers were trained to believe a CFO cares about cost and a CEO cares about vision. After 20+ years in sales and 14 in sales leadership, Rich found that a person's title has almost nothing to do with how they make large buying decisions. How they decide comes from somewhere else entirely — how they were raised, how they were burned, the rooms they've been in. In this episode you'll learn the five buyer codes (Analyzer, Closer, Defender, Validator, Visionary), the thought-provoking discovery questions that make a buyer hand you their tell, how to bubble up decision risk early instead of discovering it in legal, and how to build the decision confidence that stops buyers ghosting you or staying with the incumbent.You don't need more leads. You need to convert the ones you already have.⏱️ CHAPTERS🔗 Learn the framework: https://www.buyercoding.com🔗 Book the Decision-Centric Selling workshop — send Rich a DM🔗 Sponsor the show: [email protected]'t just read your prospect. Read the room.#BuyerCoding #B2BSales #SalesPsychologyChapters0:00 Why Buyer Coding Was Built1:36 You Don't Need More Leads2:05 The Persona Model Is Wrong3:52 Where A Buying Decision Actually Comes From5:36 The Five Buyer Codes6:30 The Discovery Question That Reveals The Tell7:41 Decision Risk Questions9:06 The Mistake Reps Make With Head Trash9:59 How Modern Buyers Show Up Now10:54 Building Decision Confidence12:09 When It's Finally Time For A Contract13:56 Have Sales Changed Or Have Buyers Changed15:19 Trust In You vs Trust In Themselves

Stephen Oommen did close to 1 million cold calls — yet 98% of his revenue came from warm referrals. This is the warm referrals vs cold calling conversation most sales reps never have.Ex Microsoft and Outreach, Stephen breaks down the b2b sales strategy and sales psychology behind getting walked into the room instead of dialling into it.In this episode of Read The Room, Rich Patterson sits down with Stephen Oommen — speaker, revenue strategist and author of the upcoming book The Referral Effect — to unpack why referral selling beats cold outbound on the deals that matter, what 'commission breath' is and how to kill it, and the one-word answer he'd give his younger self about building a career that compounds. If you want to know how to get referrals in sales without a website or a stack of marketing collateral, start here.⏱️ CHAPTERS#WarmReferrals #B2BSales #SalesPsychologyChapters0:00 Intro2:42 The Hardest Thing About Selling Yourself5:12 Why Analyzers Overthink Every Deal13:57 The One-Word Answer: Money14:34 Killing 'Commission Breath'24:00 Referrals Are A Channel, Not Luck38:00 Writing The Referral Effect48:00 Why He Has No Website51:10 Reading The Buyer Behind The TechConnect with Stephen:Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenoommenWebsite - https://stephenoommen.com/Episode Links🔗 Learn Buyer Coding: https://www.buyercoding.com📩 Book the Decision-Centric Selling workshop — DM Rich - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhitsgoals

Ever walked out of a sales call sure you crushed it, then got ghosted a week later? Rich has too. That question, why smart buyers make the decisions they make, is what Read the Room is all about.In this intro episode, host Rich Patterson lays out what this show is and why he built it. After 20+ years in sales and 14+ coaching teams, he stopped trying to understand the company and started understanding the person, because companies don't make decisions, people do. That obsession became Buyer Coding, the framework he now teaches and trains.This is a sales podcast, but not the usual one. It's about buyer psychology, decision making, leadership, marketing, and why deals really stall or close. Rich sits down with the CEOs, founders, and sales leaders you actually pitch, so you learn how they think, what keeps them from saying yes, and what makes them respond.If you sell, lead, or just love figuring out how people make decisions, hit subscribe. This is just the beginning.CHAPTERS:00:00 Why Deals Get Ghosted After You Win01:15 Meet Rich Patterson: 20 Years in Sales02:45 Why Buyers Changed But Sales Training Didn't04:30 What Is Buyer Coding06:00 Why People, Not Companies, Make the Buying Decision07:45 The Patterns That Stop Deals From Stalling09:15 More Than a Sales Podcast: Psychology and Leadership11:00 The Guests: CEOs, Founders and Sales Leaders12:30 Subscribe and Connect With RichWHAT YOU'LL LEARN:Why deals get ghosted after you thought you wonWhy buyers changed but sales training didn'tWhat Buyer Coding is and why it worksWhy people, not companies, make the buying decisionCONNECT WITH RICH:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhitsgoals/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033z2rQY4v8ZQxhvX6Ntd7Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/read-the-room-with-rich/id1896931156Subscribe for new episodes on sales, buyer psychology, and how to read the room.#SalesPodcast #BuyerPsychology #B2BSales #SalesTraining #BuyerCoding #ReadTheRoom #SalesLeadership #DecisionMaking