At Topaz Sales Consulting, we believe that strong leadership means modeling the very behavior we ask of our clients—especially when the sales landscape changes. The questions below are ones we hear often from CEOs and sales managers trying to modernize how they lead, hire, and grow sales teams.
We sat down with Jorge to talk sales strategy, hiring mistakes, and what matters most when building high-performing teams. As always, he didn’t hold back. Here’s a preview of what he shared:
On adapting to AI in sales:
“ChatGPT doesn’t replace good judgment — it sharpens it. I use it to draft smarter outreach and free up time to focus where it counts: strategy and coaching.”
On the industry-experience myth:
“The best sellers ask great questions, stay curious, and follow a process. That’s not industry-specific. We’ve seen top performers come in cold and still dominate.”
On broken hiring processes:
“Most companies run their sales interviews like they’re hiring accountants. You want to know if someone can sell? Treat the interview like a sales process and watch what happens.”
1. You’ve always believed in leading from the front. What’s one time you had to shift your own sales strategy to match the AI-driven trends (Automated tools in general—ChatGPT helping with emails, automatic transcribers for sales calls, tools like Gong that assess talk time and give AI-generated suggestions/replies)—and how did it go?
As President of Topaz Sales Consulting, I had to shift my own sales strategy when AI tools like ChatGPT gained traction. Early on, I realized I didn’t need to rely purely on instinct—data now offered insights I couldn’t afford to ignore. I started to let ChatGPT help draft first-touch emails and in marketing, we created and generated automated cold email campaigns. It wasn’t about replacing the human element; it was about sharpening it. By embracing AI to refine messaging, I gained valuable time back to use on more strategic goals —and following my lead, my team learned to balance technology with genuine connection. The shift made us sharper and faster.
2. There’s a lot of hype around sales teams needing “industry-specific expertise.” What’s your take, and can you share a time when someone without the ‘ideal background’ became a top performer under the Buyer Facilitator model?
Though industry expertise can be valuable, we believe that sales and sales leadership skills are transferable from one industry to another. Sales skills include hunting, reaching decision-makers, relationship building, consultative selling, qualifying, presentation, and closing. Sales leadership skills include coaching, motivating, pipeline management, recruiting, and holding salespeople accountable.
Whether you are selling a low-cost service or helping build a data center, salespeople still need an abundance of sales skills. And whether you have hunters, account managers, or farmers, the sales leader needs all of the same sales leadership skills.
We believe that industry-specific expertise can help a salesperson and a sales manager ask better questions based on the industry the person is in, but those questions can be taught. We believe that, in most cases, it is much harder to build sales and sales leadership skills.
We have a customer testimonial page full of client success stories. In almost every instance, our customers are comfortable hiring people from outside their industry. Most of the salespeople and sales leaders we train come from outside our customers’ industries.
Buyer Facilitator Success Story
One of our clients insists that everyone in their company take Buyer Facilitator training. One certain project manager didn’t think that BF training was going to be necessary for him to do his job. Even though he paid attention during training, he just wasn’t bought in. I could even tell during the training that he was a natural at asking questions, being curious, and being a great leader. While a project manager, he was responsible for a rigging/construction crew, and he also helped two salespeople. The salespeople, even though they too had gone through BF training, did not follow the process when selling. He soon realized he needed to step in or risk not making his quota. Knowing how to Buyer Facilitate, he found talking with prospects and clients very easy and natural. He started coaching up the salespeople and, when necessary, just closing the deal himself. Now he is a branch manager and will tell anyone who listens how invaluable it is to be a buyer facilitator both internally and externally with clients and prospects. Needless to say, his branch is flourishing.
3. You’ve seen tons of hiring processes. What’s the most common mistake companies make when trying to “modernize” their hiring—and what would you do instead?
To be successful in consistently hiring top performers in sales, one of the most common mistakes companies make is that they use the same hiring process to hire salespeople as they do to hire any other position in their business. The challenge is that salespeople require a more robust hiring process that uncovers sales skills, including bonding and rapport building, asking questions, listening, having productive conversations, and closing.
We recommend that every company implement a part of their sales hiring process that emulates a “cold call.” Pretend that the salesperson is calling in to talk to the CEO—how would you treat them? Professional, yet with skepticism, like most companies when they receive a cold call from a salesperson. This forces the salesperson to use their selling skills to move through the hiring process.
Final Thoughts from Jorge
At the end of the day, sales is still about people. The tools we use—AI, automation, assessments—those are just that: tools. What really moves the needle is how well your team connects, communicates, and earns trust.
Whether you’re rethinking your outreach, hiring outside your industry, or rebuilding your sales hiring process, the goal is the same: build a team that knows how to sell with confidence and integrity. If your team isn’t quite there yet, don’t worry—you’re not alone. But it’s time to stop hoping they’ll get better on their own.
Let’s train them to win.
