I got into the practice of reviewing sales calls after studying the greatest athletes.

Greatness has patterns.

It's a breadcrumb trail we can follow and learn from.

I began to look for patterns in books, Youtube videos, and whatever else I could get my hands on.

(Much easier now with AI, you can look this up for yourself)

During the 1992 Olympics, Michael Jordan was reportedly the only player on the Dream Team who studied film of opponents. He also watched his own winning games as a "pre game ritual" to build confidence.

Kobe Bryant apparently studied 4-5 HOURS per game watching every play multiple times. He even carried a portable DVD player everywhere, reviewing clips of opponents and his own performances pre game. Eventually he went on to even create a whole show on ESPN called "Detail" breaking down film obsessively.

Brady also had a reputation for film study. He would watch 4–5+ hours per day, even all night after games. He coined it as knowing "the answers to the test" and spotting tendencies.

Teammates like Rob Gronkowski and coaches confirm Brady watched far more than others and it's what gave him his edge.

So how does this relate to greatness in revenue team performance?

Call reviews = game tape.

If you want to be great at sales and influence…

If you want your TEAM to be great…

Watch game tape.

Make it part of your culture and your system.

Nothing else even comes close.

When we work with teams it is one of the key pillars to our approach that drives results… and it happens very quickly.

In fact, we had a client that started working with us and one of the first things we do is an audit (I've talked about our audit process before).

Although we do this in 2 phases: quantitative analysis first (data), then qualitative (call reviews)….

They weren't tracking anything.

Literally, we had absolutely ZERO useful data to find leaks.

So all we could do was the call reviews.

We spent hours reviewing calls, knew exactly how to improve the team, and coached the team in a very custom and personalized way based on their patterns, industry, etc…

We double the performance of the sales team in 30 days.

That may seem almost too good to be true… but the sales cycle was short for this particular product and team.

A 2X increase was doable and it's exactly what happened.

The founder and the team were ecstatic.

And all we could do was review calls and coach. Eventually we got them to track their key metrics and we could help with pre call / post call processes.

I'm telling you…

Watch game tape.

In this week’s newsletter, I want to share exactly how I approach watching calls so you can either improve your own performance or your team.

Either way, this will be one of the most high value elements you could learn.

As long as you implement it…

The most common pitfall is either…

1 - You give advice either out of negligence or simply you don't know what to look for

This is like a coach telling a player “just score more points” without showing them exactly where their shot mechanics are off.

Vague feedback creates vague improvement.

2 - The QC (quality control) process is so inefficient, it becomes a burden and you stop reviewing calls

This is exactly what I'll address in the rest of this newsletter.

What I’m about to share with you is the exact framework I use to extract maximum learning from minimum time investment.

The first step is removing the friction.

In the same way, if you wanted to go to the gym more…

You need to remove the friction to DO the thing you're trying to do.

If you physically have to search for calls to review, it's going to be hard to do it regularly.

Here's how I removed the friction.

Have your VA (yes, this is worth it, time is money) organize every call from the previous day in this exact format:

DATE: [Date]

[REP NAME] - CLOSES:

• Call 1: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - $[Cash collected]

• Call 2: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - $[Cash collected]

[REP NAME] - NON-CLOSES:

• Call 1: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - [Objection/Reason]

• Call 2: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - [Objection/Reason]

[REP NAME] - CLOSES:

• Call 1: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - $[Cash collected]

[REP NAME] - NON-CLOSES:

• Call 1: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - [Objection/Reason]

• Call 2: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - [Objection/Reason]

• Call 3: [Zoom/Fathom Link] - [Prospect Name] - [Objection/Reason]

Have them send this in the channel every morning or at least BEFORE you will normally review calls.

This way all I had to do was click links and I could knock out several calls in a 60-120 minute block.

Other benefits are…

I'm sure there's some software out there that can do this already.

Just don't let it stop you, a VA can do this, and it's worth it.

Either way, just set it up.

It can be tempting to hyper focus on only on lost deals.

This is a massive mistake.

Your team needs to remember what winning feels like, especially when they’re in a rut.

If you or your team hit a rut, I'd solely review wins.

When reviewing winning calls, ask:

Have reps listen to their WON calls during downtime: gym sessions, walks, commutes.

Success breeds success, but only when it’s reinforced.

Look - you either win or learn.

At least you should.

Bad calls, lost deals, etc… doesn't need to kill confidence or spur a rut as long as you turn into a win by LEARNING from it.

Here's how I review a call in order to extract the lessons.

From a high level (macro), ask:

“Why didn’t this person buy?”

"What would've made them buy?"

Be brutally specific. Most of the time it comes down to:

And the truth is, the bottom four are usually just uncertainty in disguise. People rarely admit their real objections.

This is usually a discovery issue.

So I comb through the discovery intentionally to identify where I didn't uncover what we needed to.

Ask: “When did I allow [objection] to creep in?”

If it's uncertainty…

Where did I let uncertainty in? Or when did I not uncover the real fear / concern?

This requires taking ownership and identifying the exact moment:

If they said “I need to think about it” at the end, when during the call did uncertainty begin?

Was it when they asked about your process and you gave a vague answer?

Was it when you didn’t quantify THEIR problem clearly enough?

Identify the key moment and then identify what you could've done different (and what you'll do next time).

Ask: “What question could I have asked during discovery to prevent this objection?”

Most objections at the end of the call should have been uncovered and handled in the first discovery.

Trying to handle objections at the end is elementary at best.

The best objection handling is objection prevention.

You do this in discovery with strategic questions.

So this is how you get better.

Example:

If you had asked this during discovery, you could have positioned your solution differently and avoided the objection entirely.

This is how you get better, this is how you learn.

After every review, ask these three questions for psychological closure:

This turns a negative experience into a positive learning opportunity and prevents one bad call from becoming a mental rut.

This means you not only get better at your craft, but you maintain your energy and psychological edge.

I recommend visualizing what you learned.

Too many skip this and it's such a waste if you do.

Our brain as human beings is incredibly powerful.

It's a gift.

We can mentally practice and rehearse what we learn. If you can role play with someone, do it, but in the spirit of "removing friction" just do this on your own immediately after you review a call.

Your brain stops replaying the negative version and replaces it with the successful version.

This is straight out of psycho cybernetics, it works.

When I implemented this system during our team rebuild:

And more so, it created a culture of continuous improvement.

Even with my current company, it's just who we are now and I aim to transfer this into any team who wants to be great.

Even in other departments, like marketing for example…

You can instill the discipline to examine your work with the ruthless honesty of a champion.

Champions watch game tape.

The world class in any craft, review and evaluate their work.

That's why they're the best.

Most founders avoid this kind of systematic review because it requires confronting uncomfortable truths about their team’s performance.

And ultimately their own leadership.

But the gap between where your team is now and where you want them to be is directly proportional to how systematically you review, evaluate, and improve their performance.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Stay steady,

Mitchell

PS, one single call review can reveal so many revenue leaks in your process, that when fixed, can instantly pay dividends.

And after reviewing and auditing countless revenue teams, our system for diagnosing these leaks is unmatched.

You can do this yourself, just follow the process I laid out.

But if you want us to personally diagnose the exact leaks in your system, then you can reserve that HERE.

Provided you have a good product, a validated business, and you want to grow in 2026, this is probably the easiest ROI on your time and energy.

I do it regularly for my own team.

And there hasn't been a time where I did it for someone else and we didn't find costly leaks.

Sometimes you just need someone else's eyes to take a look at your stuff.

One small tweak can change everything.

Reserve that here if you're interested: NeWell Sales Audit

Till next time,

What else would you like to learn about scaling revenue teams? Reply and let me know. I read every email.

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