I sold extended car warranties during the Great Recession.

Yeah. I was that guy. The one you hang up on. That was me.

Don't worry-- however rude you think you were to one of us, there's always another person way, way worse than that.

And those ones that were way, way worse? You could close them, too. There's nothing like being told the following:

"No matter what I'm not buying anything today, so if you think this is going to be a sale, you better just get right with God right now that nothing like that is happening today".

then getting the deal.

To be clear, that actually became one of the strongest buying signals I learned to identify. Because if I could figure out the pain-point, strategically hold it back, then give that at the very end when we're in the money box and negotiating... well, those were always the times the conversation ended with "Thank you for giving me an opportunity to earn your business today, so-and-so, please hold the line for verification.".

Then the verifier came and wrote your name up on the board. To be honest, that part was always gratifying. But when it was a person who said all that "not buying today no matter what" stuff in the beginning of the call? Those were especially gratifying.

But it wasn't easy.

It required a lot of practice, and a lot of screwing it up first, before you start making money.

I always thought there had to be a better way to get that good, without burning so many damn leads. There wasn't then. But there is now.

And, to be clear-- I ain't talkin about burning "hot" leads, here-- I mean, sure, occasionally we'd get someone who just filled something out on a website somewhere that kind of expected our call, but mostly it was people who forgot to uncheck a box when they we're trying to find lower insurance rates that picked up. Not exactly "warm transfers".

Most of the time they had no f'n' clue that "they already expressed interest"-- just brutal, stone-cold-menace-on-the-phone selling.

And if you've never done that? Just know that if you can survive it? After that, you can sell anything.

Genuinely.

It rewires something in your brain where objections stop feeling personal, and start feeling like picking a lock. And there's a key, or combination, to every lock.

If you ever learned how to juggle, or solve rubix cubes, then didn't do that for a long period of time, then tried a decade or so later? That's exactly the feeling. Almost identical. It takes just a few times to shake off the cobwebs before you can start getting back into the groove.

You can watch someone do it over, and over, and over... but until you go up there and try it, and re-wire those connections in your brain, it's all theoretical. It might help a tiny bit, but not much.

That's exactly what it's like with phone sales/closing people over a phone call. Video call, or audio-only. Makes no difference.

You have to do it.

Video call, audio-only.... makes no difference.

But that version of Chad?-- that was over a decade ago.

And the skills? They atrophy, man.

Like muscle memory that slowly turns to mush if you don't use it.

I've watched it happen to myself and it sucks. You go from being a "closer", to being the guy who says "uhhh" four times before asking for the money.

And there's basically no good way to practice. You gotta get thrown into the deep-end. Sink or swim. Do or do not.

Think about this situation: You want to get better at sales calls.

What do you do?

Beg a coworker to roleplay with you? (weird), watch a YouTube video? (passive), read a book about it? Yeah, right. Because that book is really something I'm going to internalize, and recall, remarkably well, in the middle of a live negotiation, yeah? Yeah, not so much.

So what are the options? Just keep failing? Pay $200/hr for a sales coach to sit on a Zoom? None of that is the actual thing. None of it puts you in the moment. None of it makes you talk, out loud, under pressure, to someone who's throwing objections at you in real-time.

So I thought about what I would have wanted in a sales training tool. So, the next weekend, instead of sleeping, I decided to build the damn thing.

It's called SharkSale.

It's a Discord bot. And, of course, the logo is a shark with sunglasses, a 3-piece suit, and a briefcase with two fins positively flush with cash. Obviously.

"Hey, Chad! Does he have a cool-ass gangster shark name?"

That's a super good question, completely made-up-LinkedIn-article-audience-member-person, and the answer is yes. Yes, he does.

He's a great white shark (one of the air Jaws ones, obviously), and his name is No-Neck Nicky.

You join a voice channel. Nicky hears you join, jumps in right after you, and immediately starts talking to you as a buyer. A real-sounding, opinionated, sometimes-skeptical buyer who is roleplaying a scenario based on whatever you configured. Best thing is, you get to choose what Nicky sounds like, or maybe you want a completely different persona-- whatever, all good.

Just a few messages to the bot, and you're all set-up.

You talk. It talks back. With its actual voice.

It uses Deepgram for real-time speech-to-text, so it's hearing you AS you speak. The AI responds through a large language model, and the voice comes out through ElevenLabs.

The whole thing just... works. You're having a conversation. A real one. Out loud.

And here's the part I'm most proud of and that was the biggest pain in the ass to build: barge-in.

You know how in a real phone call, you can interrupt someone mid-sentence? Like they're going on about how they need to "check with their spouse" and you cut in with a redirect? SharkSale does that. You can talk over Nicky (or whoever) mid-sentence and they'll stop, process what you said, and respond.

Just like a real call.

Getting that right was brutal, honestly. Calibrating it so it doesn't cut off when you cough or your dog barks, but DOES react when you actually start talking during playback? That took some serious tuning. But it works and it feels natural, which is the whole point.

When the session ends, it posts a full scorecard to your reports channel.

Not some vague "good job!"... oh, no. Not with No-Neck Nicky.

No-Neck Nicky gives actual REAL sales advice, and a complete breakdown of the call that has:

Discovery depth (did you actually learn anything about the buyer?)
Objection handling (or did you just panic and offer a discount?)
Buying signal recognition (did you even notice when they were ready?)
Trust building
Closing strength
Whether your approach matched the tactic mode you set

And I gamified the hell out of it because sales people are competitive dogs.

You get leaderboards, pseudonyms (so your team can trash talk each other), full transcripts, full history, and if you want a do-over you just type !re-analysis and it'll re-score the whole call.

The configuration is where it gets really fun.

You tell it:

The difficulty, the personality, the industry
What kind of buyer persona you want to practice against
Who you are (company, role, what you sell)

Want to practice cold-calling a skeptical CFO in enterprise SaaS? Done.

Want a warm, friendly small business owner who just needs a nudge? Done.

Want a 70-year-old price-sensitive CEO personality who's been burned before? Done.

It builds the whole scenario from there.

Oh-- and it does basically any language:

English
Spanish
French
German
Japanese
Mandarin
Russian
Hindi
Farsi
...and way, way more

If the model can speak it? SharkSale can run it.

It outputs in text AND speech, so accessibility is covered too. You can even opt to type your responses instead of speaking if you want.

Here's how it works:

You buy access. I send you an invite link to the Discord server with a special role. You get your own private voice channel, and the bot's already in there waiting for you. Show up, start talking, get scored. That's it.

Pricing:

- Single round: $2. Just wanna try it once? Cool. Two bucks.
- Monthly: $29.99/mo-- 30 rounds. That's one round/one dollar a day. A dollar per practice call? With a full AI buyer and a detailed scorecard? Find me a sales coach who'll do that for a dollar.
- Annual: $365/year-- 730 rounds. That's two a day, every day, for fifty cents each.

If you're serious about getting sharp and staying sharp? This is the one.

Remember, there are INFINITE WAYS you can configure this buyer persona. So it'll never get stale. You can always have it set to run the objections that are throwing YOUR team the most each and every week. When they're not doing well? Send em over to No-Neck Nicky, and let them compete for the top spot on the leaderboard.

Every tier up basically doubles your rounds and halves your cost per session. Pretty straightforward.

I built this because I've spent the last year (7 days a week, if we're being honest) working on AI tools for personality analysis and conversation at ConversaTrait-- and I kept thinking about how much better sales training could be if people could just... practice. Out loud. Whenever they want. Without needing to schedule a human or feel weird about it. The technology to make a realistic AI buyer that SPEAKS and LISTENS and RESPONDS in real-time? It finally exists, so I made it.

If you're in sales training, managing a team, or you just want to stay sharp-- DM me and I'll get you set up.

Coffee may be for closers, but sales?

...SALES ARE FOR SHARKS.

(if you don't hear the Jaws theme in your head right now I want to to re-evaluate if you've really seen Jaws enough times in your life.) #SharkSale #SalesTraining #AITools #VoiceAI #DiscordBot #SalesCoaching #ConversaTrait