Ep. 129 – Building Resilient Salespeople in the Age of AI with Scott Stollwerk - Part 1
Ep. 129 – Building Resilient Salespeople in the Age of AI with Scott Stollwerk - Part 1  
Podcast: Selling Intelligence (formerly Selling the Cloud)
Published On: Wed Jun 03 2026
Description: General Episode Description:In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Scott Stollwerk, creator of the Tao of Sales framework and member of the leadership team at Pest Share, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to explore a topic becoming increasingly important in modern sales organizations: developing the human behind the salesperson.As AI continues to automate outreach, scoring, sequencing, and administrative tasks, the true differentiator is no longer the technology stack. It is the individual seller’s mindset, emotional resilience, self-awareness, and ability to perform under pressure.Drawing from Eastern philosophy, Tai Chi, neuroscience, human performance science, and more than 15 years of leadership experience, Scott explains why traditional sales training often fails when real-world pressure arrives. He shares how the Tao of Sales helps individuals develop the internal foundation required to navigate rejection, uncertainty, and growth while building stronger sales organizations from the inside out.The conversation explores why progress matters more than speed, how leaders can create resilient teams, and why personal growth is often the missing ingredient in sales performance.  What You’ll Learn:The Tao of Sales Framework: How Eastern philosophy can create stronger, more resilient sales professionals.Beyond Techniques and Playbooks: Why most sales training breaks down when pressure increases.Progress Over Speed: Understanding the importance of building foundations before pursuing rapid growth.Human Performance in Sales: How mindset, self-awareness, and emotional regulation impact results.Coaching the Individual: Why great leaders develop people first and salespeople second.Key Topics:The origins of the Tao of SalesEastern philosophy and enterprise sellingWhy attachment to outcomes creates frustration and poor performanceThe role of resilience in sales successSales training versus skill developmentTai Chi principles applied to business and leadershipBuilding strong sales foundations before scalingGrowth, progress, and long-term performanceLeadership lessons from Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Dennis RodmanDeveloping confidence under pressureCoaching through beliefs, fears, and behavioral patternsThe psychology behind high-performing sales teamsGuest Spotlight: Scott StollwerkScott Stollwerk is a sales leader, coach, and creator of the Tao of Sales methodology. Over the past 15 years, he has developed a unique framework that combines Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, martial arts principles, and human performance science to help sales professionals thrive under pressure. As part of the leadership team at Pest Share, Scott continues to focus on developing high-performing individuals and teams by strengthening the human foundations that drive sustainable success.  Resources & Mentions:Tao of Sales FrameworkPhil JacksonMichael JordanDennis RodmanTony RobbinsAbraham MaslowRobert CialdiniThe Five Love LanguagesA Fighter’s MindDavid HortonEthics of Our FathersTai Chi and Eastern PhilosophyComing Next Week:Part 2 of this conversation dives deeper into belief systems, behavior change, leadership development, and building a high-performance culture that can sustain growth in an increasingly AI-driven sales environment.🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on sales leadership, human performance, AI, and enterprise growth.Mark Petruzzi (00:28)Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi and I'm joined as always by my co-host KK Anderson. Our guest today has spent more than a decade building sales team from the inside out. Not with just another playbook or a new stack of tools, but with something most sales organizations have really never thought to develop. The human being behind the rep. Scott Stolwerk is part of the leadership team at Pest Share.And the creator of a methodology known as the Tao of Sales. The Tao of Sales is a framework that draws on Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, and human performance science to develop sellers who results hold when the pressure comes. He has been doing this work for 15 years and the results follow him everywhere he goes.KK Anderson (01:12)Scott's framework could not be more timely. Everyone in this audience is navigating the same tension right now. AI is handling more of the execution layer, the outreach, the sequencing, the scoring. And that means that the gap to determine who wins is not just the tool anymore. It's the person. And it's what they believe, it's how they manage their state of mind.Whether they can stay present in a hard conversation. And it's really coming back to some of those more human elements that were present before technology took a hold. Now, Scott has been working on exactly this problem for a long time. And today we're excited to dig in with Scott and find out what he's learned and how he implements this within his teams. Now, this is part one of a two-part conversation, and we'll be back with Scott.For part two to go deeper on belief science, culture building, and what it actually takes to install this inside a sales organization next week. So be sure to tune back in next week as well. Now, for today's episode, here is what we're going to be covering: four key topics. Number one, the Tau of Sales. What is it? Where did it come from? And why Eastern philosophy maps and how it maps onto modern sales better than most Western methodologies.Topic number two, what AI cannot fix and why the human edge is the last defensible advantage, and what that means for how you can develop your team as a sales leader. And then part two will be topic three, which will be beliefs, behaviors, and the six inches between the ears. And topic four building a high performance culture from the inside out. Andwhat leaders are getting wrong about development and what Scott does differently, and things you can take back and do within your own sales organization today.Mark Petruzzi (02:59)Thank you, KK. Scott, welcome to Selling Intelligence.Scott Stollwerk (03:03)Thank you so much for having me. Really a pleasure to be here.Mark Petruzzi (03:04)Awesome.Always a pleasure to be with you as well. Topic one, the DAO of sales, what is it and why does it work so well? So, Scott, most sales methodologies come with a deck, a framework, and sometimes a certification. Yours came from Eastern Philosophy, Tai Chi, and the decade of watching what actually holds under pressure. Walk us through the origin story of the DAO of sales.And what did you see happening to sellers that made you go in this direction at the beginning instead of down a more traditional path?Scott Stollwerk (03:36)Wow, terrific question. And it's so long ago. it's been an amazing journey. And I'll tell you, look, the early days, you may even remember when you were a consultant and and working with enterprise software sales teams, the early days in in our profession they I don't know if it's very complimentary toTo these organizations. But you know, I used to hear a lot of things like, hey Scott, I thought you were smart on team weekly calls, like, okay, this is at stage one and this is at stage two. And you really weren't, the point is, you really weren't a human being. To the higher up you went in the corporate hierarchy, you were more and more a number. AndSales to me wasn't something that I started. I went to law school and I practiced as a class action consumer side class action attorney for a little bit. It was miserable. I needed to talk to people. so really the Dow of sales is the way I think I didn't invent it. I didn't create these things. They're just discoverable as you go.Certainly if you're being treated like a number, certainly if it's never too fast, like building a revenue team for a venture-backed company or private equity, you will find the Dow. And I think each of us that have sold in these negative environments, you know it's there. It it's ours to pull it out and when we get the opportunity to turn things around.And try and convince those that are that are either in charge or making up the rules where you are, that there is a better way, that there's a more humanistic, nicer but more effective. I don't want to say faster, but more effective way of succeeding. And that could be in anything. If it's in sales, great, if it's playing the piano,If it's speaking in public, the main tenant of the Tao of sales is that we practice sales to be better people first. And you can put whatever qualifier before people: husband, people, sons, daughters, sales, whatever it is, we practice that first to be better people and to hit our number second. And therein lies in that simple motto, probably the first.Eastern philosophy tenet that will cover, and that is detaching from your goals. Attachments create pain, they create frustration, they create impatience at the very least. And Phil Jackson treats that beautifully in his books. Just so everybody knows, he's the guy that got Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman in the same room to meditate and contemplate eternity. SoYou know, all veneration, all credit goes to the the teachers, the masters that came before us in the Dow.KK Anderson (06:08)Really interesting. And I've heard you use a phrase, probably stop our listeners in their tracks. And that is that everyone is a black belt until they get hit in the face. Or maybe you said punched in the face, right? and that's really the whole problem with sales training right there. And I've been in the sales training industry specifically for 20 years myself. SoScott Stollwerk (06:09)Really interesting. I I've heard you use ourKK Anderson (06:29)What what does conventional sales development get wrong about how people actually change and this kind of this human approach? Like how does that pivot?Scott Stollwerk (06:40)There's so much.And it's an it's an excellent question because of it. KK, there's literally volumes behind this. But it it has to do with ignoring the the human side of any interaction, of any communication. Somebody came up with a technique. And look, all the books are good. I and they're based, some of them are based in sociology, many of them are based in psychology. And they're gonna give you a scripted answer.What we found, and I say that Mark and KK, you you and I, we've worked together on these things in the past. We, the collective, we, the folks that are on the side of good, we've found that first you have to address the human being. And we're all gonna get punched in the face in one way or another. With you.It's not public speaking. KK, I've seen you stand in front of groups and orate beautifully, and somebody could heckle and somebody could question, and you're still in the center, absolutely at home, no problem. But you never know, especially with enterprise sales, you never know what the curveball is going to be. So we have to go back way up from the technique.Techniques don't win fights. look, I a lot of this is is based on tai chi, and most people don't understand tai chi is a combat art. Really? Mark even said it to me the first time in Charlotte. He said, Scott, all I've seen is is these grandmas in the park doing these soft movements. Well, within that is philosophy, psychology,Military strategy, you name it, it's all in those in those kung fu ballet moves. So the point is, I could teach a salesperson, I could teach anybody a technique. But how did you get there? Right? You'll often see on an Instagram video, purported martial arts teacher or master says, Okay, grab me here, and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that, and the person ends up on the floor. Well, really.Well, how did you get to here? And so it's the same with the sales training. We're gonna bring everybody into a room and we're gonna learn a bunch of new techniques. Okay, Mark is different than Scott, and KK is different than Mark. We all are the sum of our fears and the sum of our experiences. And so you're gonna be different with that one technique than I am.So it's really probably better to teach skill, which addresses deficit in all the personality and characteristic traits that we need as enterprise salespeople. So I say we go all the way back and we start from the beginning because yeah, technique is good. You can start with technique, but it's speed and angles that win fights or objections or deals.It's not the technique. Now, if you're a an observant student.Then you'll find, I see this technique has me holding the baby a certain way. And so you recognize a skill that happens to be expressed in this technique. I recognize that structure. So my sacred area, what I'm trying to protect, won't be violated by that objection. Objection in the context of a sales.role playing or objection in the context of a sparring where somebody's punching and you have to you have to protect this space. So if you're astute enough as somebody on the path, you can find important good things and techniques. But very often just starting there and ending there, you're gonna leave that group of salespeople, KK, after your three-day intensive andThey're gonna go right back, just like when we get punched in the face for the first time, we're gonna go right back to the most basic part of our training, black belt to blue belt, because of the real world scenario. I I hope that answered the question. I it was a bit of a long way around it.KK Anderson (10:11)It does. It's like it's the confidence that you're building and the consistent preparation and training that allows for you to be able to apply techniques that you would get in any kind of a traditional sales training.Scott Stollwerk (10:24)Exactly. Now think of think of Phil Jackson in this context, in the context of your answer. He's got a guy in Michael Jordan. There's never been a human being more attached to a goal or a result than Michael Jordan. You listen to that great docuseries they did. This guy is probably still today the most driven human being on the planet to the outcome. It didn't matter if it was.Flicking bottle caps or quarters up against a wall to see who could get closer, or the national championship. Contrast that with Dennis Rodman, who not only was he an artist, he was a revolutionary in his own mind against society. And I'll do the opposite of what authority says, and doesn't give a darn about outcomes, just wants free expression.Mark Petruzzi (10:57)Thank you.Scott Stollwerk (11:10)Doesn't want. Okay, so now you're going to apply the same sales technique or even the same meditation technique to both of them? No. Phil Jackson found each of them where they were and applied the technique to the human. And that's why he was successful.KK Anderson (11:24)And and quickly, Mark, before you ask your next question, talk to me about why this is so important in sales. Because we live in a world where 70% of the time we're getting rejected, right? it's a pressure cooker. you could have an excellent quarter followed by the worst quarter of your life, It's just different animal. And that is thatKind of part of why this Dow of sales is so effective in in sales, because it's just a whole nother planet.Scott Stollwerk (11:50)I'll tell you, it's a different approach. It's gonna have a lot of the same principles in it. Well, some. Right? You need you need to forecast deals, even though there's the Zen, there's a Zen Koan in that. Yeah, human behavior is not predictable. But there are good predictors of human behavior. Now make it a departmental behavior or multiple departmental.And then you even used words in there that I we probably need to go back and talk about definitions. we started the conversation with typical CEOs, startups, enterprise, it doesn't matter. Revenue never happens fast enough. Well, there's definition behind that. I don't believe in speed when it comes to building a revenue organization. You you need it.You better have it, especially if you get a Series A or other check from the VC community. You better be ready to fly. But the fact is, in the Dow of Sales, we're happy with progress. And we define progress as just another step up the mountain. I don't know how far up the mountain. what Mark Petruzzi's mountain is. I think I do.KK, maybe yours is closer to sales mastery like mine, just being on the path long enough to being able to affect people's lives positively by transferring information to them and wisdom. Well, if that's the top of the mountain, you can't just come in and say, KK, be a thousand feet closer today. No, we we have to change our definition.Right. And that goes back to Mark's question about the tree and the mountain, right? The tree has to grow down and out before it goes up. And this is everything in in Asian philosophy and martial arts, Eastern philosophy. it's the opposite. If you want to walk forward, you actually have to use your feet to push down and backwards. Right? It's the same with a car tire. How can a cup be half empty and half full at the same time?And so we really have to get into definitions to answer your question, KK, but the fact is you have to get rid of judgment. You have to balance self-criticism. You have to play every day. I don't I don't even like the word practice because when I was younger, for some reason my dad insisted that I practice and sometimes usedPunishment to make me practice, you have to change those keywords in your own head. And you and I, KK, we had a great experience in New Orleans with this. and your experience with the arrows, but it this is directly on point with that. Progress, not speed towards growth. What happens if you try and make the tree grow up before it grows down and out?It dies. It nothing nothing subs of substance is being fed. And it's the same with the mountain. I and I want to recommend a master here that I learned from about the mountain. I'm gonna say his name was Robert Holder or Holden.Horton, Robert Horton.The first I read about him was in a book called A Fighter's Mind.And at the time he was the most accomplished ultra marathoner. And what he was trying to do was break the record between Mexico in the Rocky Mountains and Canada. And I will let all the listeners read from his mouth how important definitions are, how important people are that you surround yourself in the journey.It's a fantastic book all around. This is one chapter, but if you want to learn about the mountain and that analogy, David Horton. is a much better sifu than I am for for this particular lesson.Mark Petruzzi (15:02)a couple things here. Let me bring us quickly on a sidebar and make sure that our audience knows and the the people who follow us every week. First off, how much we appreciate all the the things that we learn from amazing guests like Scott, and also the feedback we receive through LinkedIn and other ways from all of you aboutScott Stollwerk (15:04)Well.Mark Petruzzi (15:23)how this podcast is evolving. and the my sidebar on that is, every once in a while I take a look at Facebook. I don't really post anything, but I notice on Facebook and I noticed on a couple of the groups that I signed up for, one was a fly fishing group in North Carolina. and I see you would think fly fishermen men and fly fisherman womenwould would be a little more polite to each other and they frankly rip each other up. you'd also think in the South people would be a little more polite. But I've I've learned some things there about the ⁓ the state of social media. I share that because we don't ever get that kind of feedback from our team. So either our fan base is the most polite individuals in the world or or who knows what. ButThe the reason I share that is at the end of the day, it's just incredible what a sales team can evolve to. And it's incredible, maybe because we have to work with that rejection that KK mentioned, or just dealing with with all the emotions of every human that's involved with a decision, in concert with all the data and corporate decisions that have to make as well.But I just I wanted to share that. ⁓ I also want to touch on what Scott mentioned before about the tree. The the tree does have to grow down as deep as possible and out before it can grow taller. And at the end of the day, you can you can maybe make some exceptions to that. a bamboo tree doesn't really go too much, it goes up.But then it gets supported by the forest that it creates with it everyone else. But most trees will not grow unless the they they have that root base and the the base structure to be able to accept that growth. very often, most often, you don't see trees growing and then just kind of bowing over because they they grew too fast. So that's the same thing with a sales team.Like you have to build that. It may feel l a bit unconventional, right? That you know you if you need to grow fast and you know if your board is telling you, well, you've got to grow 30% this quarter, but if you don't have the base there, then you've you've gotta come back with that. You've got to tell them what you need to build to get there.And that's what I love about what we're talking about here around the Dow of sales. Just building that base that allows for your sales team success.Scott Stollwerk (17:51)And you you're a hundred percent right. And Mark, I don't want to indicate that you can't go fast, it's such a loaded word because it it's relative to everybody's definition.you have to stop before you ask yourself, your very human brain and mind to go fast, okay, do I have a minimum viable product?Who do I have selling for me? What are they capable of? What did they do last year? Can I access new and more people think can do two million dollars instead of a million five? And why? Does the team have an authoritative leader that they will follow?KK Anderson (18:22)Yeah.Scott Stollwerk (18:27)Does that leader have a constitution signed, sealed, and delivered, a credo? This is how we're gonna act. This is the opportunity. One of my favorites, going back to skill versus technique, that we opened the hour with, is the Navy SEALs and a lot of the special ops divisions within our military. They have this overriding principle.Leave no one behind. It gives me chills. Because A, if I'm halfway aware why they're behind to begin with, it's pretty stinking dangerous. And I have agreed. I've signed up and I have the pin and I have the patches and the tattoos. I've signed up to go back into the ninth depth of hell to save that person.I promise you, that's not a reflex that's built into humanity in our psyches. That's something that has to be overcome by everybody, whether you're the most decorated silver star wearing spec ops person, or you're just Scott Stolwerk, who's afraid of noises in the middle of the night. It you you will have a significant fear response. But you signed up.in your credo regardless to go back in and bring them out. If at the very least it's just to bring them out. They Well, it's not life and death on a sales team. Well sometimes it is.But have the credo and have the definitions. Right? Who's gonna pick up the mantle when one person can't do the job? What does success mean? And try and get your board or the C levels to agree that this is what success looks like immediately.I have the right people. Do I have the right number of people? Does everybody understand the same definition? Right? Progress? We don't know how high the mountain is for us. Success, in my definition, it's what we've overcome as a team. ultimately, you're gonna have KPIs, you're gonna have revenue. So, Mark, the the the point of thisNow also way too long response to your comment is that you can go faster.Do you have the bricks and the mortar in place? Do you know the difference between the brick and the mortar?And does everybody on that new team that you've brought in to your company, do they all understand the same definitions of the critical words? And then if you've got the runway, go. And if you learn that you don't have the runway, fall back, just like our spec ops people, seek cover first. Fall back, seek cover.Return fire. You have to organize again. You have to find out where the danger's coming from. Maybe have a full HUDA loop or analytical loop, feedback loop where you're seeing, okay, well, we don't have enough leads. The team is closing at a 50% rate for qualified opportunities. That's spec ops for a sales team. All right, well, we need more at bats. If that's the case and we're not bringing in enough, we need more at bats.So that kind of thing. And hopefully you can get enough momentum in the time allotted going faster, but I would say still not fast like the investment community means it when they say it. Necessary.KK Anderson (21:17)You know what's funnyis it there was a torrential downpour last night in Houston, Texas, and I was talking to my sister on the phone this morning having a cup of coffee and she said she's got bamboo all along her fence in her backyard and she said Kristen, you wouldn't believe the bamboo is like in the pool because the rain comes down and it just folds right down, right? It doesn't have the strong root.Right. And then and then it will come back. it'll come back eventually and stand back up straight. But it's interesting, Mark, that you use that analogy too when talking about a tree. And when when you were describing that, Scott, I was almost thinking like a house of cards. Like if you build a sales team that's just on a playbook or a method or a simple process or executing on something, you know, tack, technical or tactile, one rainstorm and poof.one gust a win, the whole thing falls down. Right. And so if you're if you're strengthening the inner human and the inner person to handle the adversity, handle the situations, and you're gonna be a lot stronger for it. And it may take longer to to to build it, but you'll get there. Now you ⁓ I've heard you talk about Tony Robbins and and his six human needs. And I've listened to a bunch of his work and andHis human needs are certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth. And I think the last one is contribution. And so and I know that's important and a pillar to your kind of your philosophy there on the DAO sales, but like how do you use those needs to be able to figure out if a seller is stuck and what to do to coach them? Like is there any like story or anything you can remember on how you've used that toTo help someone shift, yeah.Scott Stollwerk (22:53)So many.Excellent. Thank you for asking that. Listen, we are so fortunate today as coaches, as leaders, to have this technology that we're leveraging right now, and things like gong and zoom, and they they don't just record the sales call, they annotate it, they index it.You could search it for how many times Scott said ⁓ or like. And it's absolutely beautiful. One of the technologies we use, Ask Elephant, it actually you can upload all the great books that we've read and we've learned from Challenger Sale, Solution Selling. I uploaded Hope is Not a Strategy, and a couple of others.And the video will email you or slack you and tell you when somebody violated one of those tenants. And it's it's incredible. So what do you do? Sometimes it's just a case of of not being on message. The person hasn't done the reps. That's a bad that's a bad pun. They haven't done the repetitions in order to internalize the messaging. That's easy.You know, you give that 30, 60 days, whatever. Usually a good s a good individual contributor, you don't get a lot of that. But you may find that you're listening KK to Scott Stolwork on a sales call and he's afraid to ask Mark for about money, about budget. Scott was brought up in very varying circumstances, and for whatever reason, he's got issues.He thinks fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. And that's what the product costs: $50,000. So am I gonna be as effective standing in the pocket, trying to gain commitment from Mark, if that's what Zoom and Gong and Ask Elephant uncover? No. We've got to be, and it doesn't just have to be Tony Robbins, okay? Tony Robbins took from Maslow.And Maslow took from Socrates, and Socrates, I mean, this stuff's been around for 3,800 years. There's a book called Ethics of Our Fathers. If you're a sales coach, I want you to get an English, an English translation of Ethics of Our Fathers. I I it could it could predate Judeo-Christian doc doctrine. But anyway, you'll see there has to be that connection there. There itJust you you need your wise as the individual contributor in order to change. And as the coach, you need either some structure psychologically. It all comes down to survival. In in a society that's eight billion people, it might be different than it was in a society that was 500 million, but just more of the same.We all have a need, especially in our profession, for status. Okay, if somebody's need for status is getting in the way of them playing on your team, they haven't signed the credo yet, the constitution. It's it's in their inbox, unsigned. Well, so you you have to have a framework, but most of the problems and challenges that we have as coaches.we can find in these very basic human psychology and sociology tenets. You know, and and there are an infinite number of writers. Cialdini first wrote it and he's making a comeback right now online. I don't know why, but maybe it's because I said his name on a on a podcast like this and now I'm seeing I think I'm on a different side of the internet, as my daughter would say.KK Anderson (26:06)Yeah.Scott Stollwerk (26:07)We're just giving something to somebody. And then you have somebody who the gentleman that wrote the book Giftology, who took it to an entire extreme. It we're we're complex beings, KK, but we're also very simple in a lot of straightforward ways. To the Yeah, and and I I read this great book calledKK Anderson (26:22)It's the intersection of that where we figure it out. And itScott Stollwerk (26:27)Love languages or the five love languages. There are only five of them. So easy easy enough to find some common ground to somebody you're trying to coach to not be afraid of money.KK Anderson (26:29)I've read that.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.