PODCAST · business
Software Sales On Fire
by Dean Patino
Ignite your pipeline. Smoke your quota. A daily podcast helping enterprise software sales reps find business, win business, and make their number with greater consistency.
Episodes
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One Department Down. How Do You Get Into the Other Six?
Your best prospect is the company that already bought from you. Turn a successful deployment into relevant introductions and separate business cases across departments — without assuming what worked in one place automatically matters in another.
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Your Prospect Just Announced Big Plans. Where Does Your Solution Fit?
An announcement is not an opening — it's a map. Turn earnings commentary, expansion news, acquisitions, and leadership priorities into a specific account-entry strategy: who feels the pressure, where your solution fits, and whether the fit is real enough to pursue.
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Bonus: What Great Reps Do Differently With Their SE — 43 Years of Sales Engineering With Dave Murphy
A bonus interview with sales engineering leader Dave Murphy: the preparation great reps do, how credibility is won and lost with a technical buyer, protecting the demo flow, and the SE superpower most teams underuse.
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"There's No Budget." Is There a Path Forward?
No budget is a diagnosis, not a verdict. Learn to tell genuinely unavailable funding apart from low priority, unclear ownership, and a business case that hasn't earned investment — because each one has a completely different path forward.
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What's the Compelling Event?
No compelling event, no close date worth believing. Reset your discovery around the four questions that reveal whether the buyer has a real reason to act: the current process, the consequences of staying with it, the priority against everything else, and the motivation to move.
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Couldn't We Just Build This With AI?
The AI build question deserves a real answer, not a defensive one. Guide a balanced build-versus-buy discussion across delivery time, ownership, integration, maintenance, security, and ongoing costs — and help the buyer compare what they'd actually own against what they'd actually get.
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You Scanned 200 Badges. How Many Opportunities Did You Create?
A badge scan is a contact record, not a conversation — and it converts at nearly zero. Set event goals around substantive conversations, real qualification, and confirmed next steps with a date, then run the follow-up while the event is still happening, not the Monday after.
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Your Buyers Accept Your LinkedIn Requests. Then Nothing Happens.
An accepted connection request is permission to exist in someone's feed — not permission to sell. Build a deliberate progression from connection to conversation: the reason you connected, visible relevance, a question worth answering, and an invitation small enough to accept.
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Your ROI Looks Amazing. The CFO Doesn't Believe It.
A business case that adds up on your slide can still be unfundable. Separate cash savings, capacity gains, risk estimates, and revenue assumptions — label what each one is, and get the owner inside the customer's business to validate it before it ever reaches finance.
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Everyone Likes Your Solution—Except the Person Who Can Kill the Deal.
A Saturday deal clinic: the committee loves your solution, but one person you may never have met can end the deal. Identify the real objection, the influence, and the personal and operational stakes — then build the direct resolution plan and make the honest save-or-walk-away call.
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Bonus Interview: 40 Years Placing Software Sales Reps — What Rich Diekmann Wishes Every Rep Knew
A special bonus episode. Executive recruiter Rich Diekmann has spent 40 years placing enterprise software and SaaS salespeople. He explains what recruiters actually do, how your resume and LinkedIn profile are really read, what hiring managers are asking for right now, how to move from mid-market...
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You Didn't Help Write the RFP. Should You Even Respond?
An RFP you never helped write lands in your inbox. Before committing weeks of your team's time, assess fit, access, evaluation rules, incumbent advantage, and response cost — then decide between a full response, a different play, or the professional no.
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“We Can Just Do This on Zoom.” Give Them a Reason to Meet in Person.
When a buyer says “let’s just do this on Zoom,” don’t argue for travel — earn the room. Propose a working session with the right participants, a concrete output, and a credible reason physical presence helps.
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Your Competitor Is 40% Cheaper. What Do You Say Next?
Before you answer a cheaper competitor's price, clarify scope, implementation, support, usage, and outcomes. Most price gaps aren't price gaps — they're comparison gaps.
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Your Competitor Can Check Every Box, Too. Now What?
When every vendor passes the checklist, feature comparisons stop deciding deals. How to differentiate through the buyer's operating requirements, implementation realities, risks, and measurable outcomes.
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The Partner Owns the Relationship. How Do You Earn a Seat?
How to establish a customer-facing role in partner-owned accounts — adding visible value while respecting the partner's position, without going around them or waiting on the sidelines.
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Your QBR Is Coming. Can You Defend Your Number?
How to build a concise, credible QBR account of your performance, forecast evidence, exposure, and the actions needed to close the gap — so the review becomes a working session, not an interrogation.
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Your Manager Wants It in Commit. You Don't Believe It Belongs There.
How to explain the evidence, the missing milestones, and your recovery actions when your manager wants a deal in commit and you don't believe it — without losing credibility under pressure.
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🔥 Nobody Asked for Your Proposal. Give Them a Reason to Read It.
An unsolicited proposal usually reads as marketing — so buyers skim it for a price and delete it. How to build a short, one-page proposal with a relevant observation, a clearly labeled hypothesis, potential value, and an invitation to validate it.
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"We're All Set." How to Open a Conversation With a Satisfied Account
A satisfied account does not need a pitch — it needs a better question. How to open a conversation that uncovers unresolved problems without attacking the incumbent or manufacturing dissatisfaction.
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They Said Yes. So Why Isn’t Your Deal Signed?
A verbal yes is not a signed agreement. Dean walks through the work between “We want to buy” and an executed contract: making remaining approvals visible, finding the question behind “It’s under review,” handling a reopened alternative, and answering a last-minute discount request without…
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Your Biggest Deal Slipped. What's Your Recovery Plan?
Tuesday buyer-response episode: your biggest deal just slipped out of the quarter. Reassess the quarter with buying evidence and feasible actions — instead of the two reflexes that make it worse: indiscriminate discounting and pressure.
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I’m a Fortune 500 Buyer. Your LinkedIn Message Just Arrived. Why Would I Answer?
Monday's pipeline edition from the buyer's side of LinkedIn. Walk through several cold messages the way a Fortune 500 executive receives them — the effort required to understand them, whether they connect to anything real, and what makes one worth answering without assuming familiarity.
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Don't Let Procurement's Red Tape Untie Your Deal
Don't Let Procurement's Red Tape Untie Your Deal — Get the Deal Signed. Dean explains three ways to make a purchase approvable: an exception-first approval ledger, a consolidation counterfactual, and a conditional commercial release. Includes an AI document-reconciliation workflow, three fully...
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Deal Clinic: Your Champion Left, Budget Disappeared. Rescue or Walk Away?
Your champion is gone, and the budget is suddenly unclear. Dean Patino walks through a deal clinic scenario, revealing the critical questions to ask and the specific actions to take when an enterprise deal is on the brink.
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Stop Quarter-End Scrambling: Build Next Quarter's Pipeline Today
A practical system for testing next-quarter pipeline timing, calculating the real gap, creating credible opportunities, and protecting weekly prospecting time.
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Welcome to Software Sales On Fire
Dean Patino opens Software Sales On Fire and shares what listeners can expect: practical software sales strategies, lessons from decades in the industry, and daily guidance to help build pipeline and beat quota.
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Re-Engage Stalled Deals: The Sharper Value Narrative in AI Consolidation
Is your pipeline full of promising deals going nowhere fast? This episode helps you diagnose why opportunities stall in today's rapidly changing enterprise software landscape. Learn how to re-engage effectively by leveraging a sharper value narrative and multi-threading within accounts, even…
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The Demo Went Great. Then Nothing. How to Prevent the Stall.
Three buyers can say “That’s exactly what we’ve been looking for” and need three completely different follow-ups. Dean walks through how to tell whether your buyer has no initiative, expects internal resistance, or has a funded project that needs help advancing — and what to do before, during…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Ignite your pipeline. Smoke your quota. A daily podcast helping enterprise software sales reps find business, win business, and make their number with greater consistency.
HOSTED BY
Dean Patino
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Software Sales On Fire have?
Software Sales On Fire currently has 29 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Software Sales On Fire about?
Ignite your pipeline. Smoke your quota. A daily podcast helping enterprise software sales reps find business, win business, and make their number with greater consistency.
How often does Software Sales On Fire release new episodes?
Software Sales On Fire has 29 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Software Sales On Fire?
You can listen to Software Sales On Fire on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Software Sales On Fire?
Software Sales On Fire is created and hosted by Dean Patino.
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