New Podcast: The Craft of LBM Sales
Built for LBM sales pros who want to stop competing on price and start closing more profitable deals with confidence. Story-driven, practical episodes (8–15 minutes) drop every Monday and Wednesday to help you sharpen your craft, prove your value, and win more high-margin sales.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts — or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 15th-century Europe, the son of a local cheesemonger had almost no chance of rising above poverty. Although he was scraping along the bottom rung of society, this young man believed he was destined for greatness.
He carried himself as if he’d been misplaced at birth. Oh no, he exuded, I’ve got royalty in these veins and my current station in life is a small clerical error that shall be fixed.
So, he set out to fix it.
First, he talked his way onto a Mediterranean trading ship despite having zero aptitude for navigation. The quadrant—the essential instrument for finding your position at sea—baffled him. He misread islands for faraway continents, frustrated his crew, and the only trust he earned was distrust.
He was a maritime rube who projected the confidence of a king.
Back on land he fabricated a story about his noble lineage, married into aristocracy, and used his new connections to secure an audience with a king.
He arrived without any real plan or any details.
What he did have was a vision and a few bold demands:
Funding for a grand voyage
The title “Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea”
Governorship over any lands he discovered
10 percent of all future commerce with those lands, in perpetuity
The king declined but he didn’t laugh the man out of court. He simply said the timing wasn’t right and wished him luck.
While the proposal was rejected, the man himself was not.
The king’s refusal was also a signal: His vision was legitimate. And if a king treated it seriously, others should too.
For more than a decade he pitched variations of his dream from court to court. He absorbed rejection after rejection but never found a single person of influence who called his vision absurd.
Eventually, he found a queen who said yes.
All of his bold demands were approved—except one. In the fine print, she struck out the 10-percent-of-revenue-in-perpetuity clause. (This was wise. We now know this would have been the costliest fine print in the history of the world. He was asking for a 10 percent cut of everything the American economy would ever make—a revenue stream worth hundreds of trillions in wealth.)
With Queen Isabella’s blessings, money, and three ships—the Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María—Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492.
The genius of belief
In The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene writes, “In one area [Columbus] was a genius: He knew how to sell himself . . . He projected a sense of confidence that was completely out of proportion to his means. Nor was his confidence the aggressive, ugly self-promotion of an upstart—it was a quiet and calm self-assurance.”
Columbus had no pedigree, no money, no skills, no ships, and no crew. But he had one thing: unyielding self-belief. Enough to convince others to believe, too.
Sales is no different.
We are in the business of belief.
If you don’t believe in yourself—and in the value you bring—why would anyone else?
Regardless of age or experience, the route to Columbus-level confidence is simple: Be specific. The more precisely you act, the more believable you become. Below are a pair of attitudes and precise, repeatable actions—one for prospecting calls, and one for the meetings that follow.
On prospecting calls
What you convey: I help my clients build better.
What you do: Before the call, write the single sales outcome you want (“Book a 20-minute face-to-face meeting with the owner.”).
What you say: “I’ll be quick because I know you are busy. I’m calling because we’ve helped [name of competitor] cut [problem X] by Y. If this could be useful to you, would you be open to scheduling 15 minutes to explore this sometime in the next two weeks?”
In the Meeting
What you convey: I help people visualize a better future.
What you do: Gather evidence—testimonials, referrals—from current clients you’ve helped achieve improvements in their businesses.
What you say: “What would have to be true for you to be happy with your progress over the next 6 months here?” Follow with two specifiers: timeline and priority. Reinforce the reasonableness of their aspirations with the success you’ve had with other builders—and then start working backward from the outcome your prospect shared.
#1 Rule in Sales: Protect Your Confidence
As Robert Greene put it:
“It is within your own power to set your own price. How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself. If you only ask for a little, shuffle your feet and lower your head, people will assume this reflects your character. But this behavior is not you—it is only how you have chosen to present yourself to other people.”
Columbus asked for 10 percent of everything, forever.
It was ludicrous—and it almost worked.
So, prepare well.
Treat sales as a craft.
And ask for what you want.
Choose to be overcome by your own self-belief and you’ll be amazed at how far you can advance people, ideas, and opportunities.
P.S. Here is that link again to subscribe to our new podcast!
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Bradley Hartmann & Co.
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Contact Bradley Hartmann:
bradley@bradleyhartmannandco.com
The Craft of LBM Sales 