Co-founders Mike Bosworth and Ben Zoldan have been collaborators for more than a decade, training tens of thousands of salespeople combined. Mike and Ben co-founded Story Leaders, LLC initially to help improve the lives of salespeople, and are now working with other professionals: senior executives, marketers, coaches, community leaders, and others – anyone who’s business involves influencing change:

Mike Bosworth

Mike Bosworth, Co-Founder:

When I founded Solution Selling® in 1983, and then co-founded CustomerCentric Selling® in 2001, my mission was the same: help the bottom 80% of salespeople feed their families, live in nice homes and send their kids to good schools. These models were based on what I learned early in my career: that the very best salespeople (I called them “Eagles”) were able to uncover a buyer’s “needs” and then prescribe a “solution”. For three decades, I thought my sales methodologies held the key to what the very best salespeople were actually doing. After 30 years, my own perspective on what the most influential people do to influence change has been turned on its head. My goal in founding Story Leaders with Ben is to help the masses do what had only been possessed by the very few.

Ben Zoldan

Ben Zoldan, Co-founder:

For the majority of my professional career, my way of selling was based on finding a problem, and then solving it. It made so much sense to me, it appealed to my logical way of going about the world. It’s what I did. Its what I believed in. It’s how I went through life. But something was missing, and worse, for so many years, I didn't know what it was. Then, some amazing things happened in and around my life that completely reshaped how I viewed, not just the world of "selling', but in how I could better affect change in my own life. Its like believing that the world is flat, as we once did, and then one-day learning its no longer so. I believe we’ve discovered a way to improve the lives of anyone who has to influence change - salespeople and other professionals - by demystifying what the most inspiring people do to influence change, and I'm excited to share this new understanding with the world.

Interview with Mike from CBS' Business Network BNET Blog
May 27, 2010

How Storytelling Helps You Sell
If you’ve been in sales for more than a week or two, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Mike Bosworth. He’s the author of two huge and highly influential best-selling books in the sales training field: Solution Selling and Customer-Centric Selling.
Mike has recently gone through a major transformation in how he trains people to sell — an approach that I honestly believe can help most sales pros to sell more quickly and easily. Yesterday we spent some time talking, and here’s the high points of that conversation:...

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Interview with Ben From CBS' Business Network BNET Blog
December 1, 2010

The Power of Listening
While sales trainers always talk about the importance of listening, they almost never explain how to do it effectively. Well, it turns out that listening is the most important part of telling a compelling story. It sounds backwards, but it’s true! To help you understand why, here’s an interview with Mike’s business partner, Ben Zoldan. I think you’ll find it a real “ear-opener.”

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