What this one proves: the answer to grinding harder was a system, and it made him his team's number one pipeline generator.

Sales is supposed to be easy. Somebody told you that early, and you believed them.

So when it feels hard, you draw the only conclusion available: the problem is you. Not the territory. Not the role. You.

And the only answer you've ever had is more.

That's where Nolan was when he started.

The Before

Nolan was a Regional Sales Manager at Splunk, a few months into a new role covering net-new accounts. A $300K annual target. No hand-raisers.

He was the hardest worker on his team. Lunch was 15 minutes at his desk, because a proper break felt like slacking.

An MBA taken "to prove to myself that I can get it".

He had burned out before; in grad school it ended in a panic attack. A few months before coaching, his days were ending at 7pm:

"I would just go to bed at like 7:00. Like I didn't want to do anything... It was, it was bad. It was a really bad state."

The pattern was building again: workdays bleeding into evenings, over-researching accounts instead of picking up the phone.

As he put it:

"I could do a million things and not move an inch."

And underneath it, the verdict:

"I always feel like I didn't do enough."

He'd tried tactical sales coaching, the books, borrowed frameworks. None of it touched what was actually going on.

The Work

Mindset came first. We traced the belief back to an early-career sales programme that taught him sales was supposed to be easy.

Challenging a thought against the evidence became his daily tool for catching a spiral early.

One reframe stuck hardest of all, the friend test:

"That one's been magic. I use it all the time."

He called the belief shift the biggest of the programme:

"So I dispensed with the idea that, you know, it's supposed to be easy and especially if you want to be good, that's the difference."

The difficulty was exactly why he liked the job. Once he accepted that, the guilt lost its grip.

On Focus, he built an operating rhythm that fitted how he actually works: the call list built the night before, a practice he named "coiling the spring", pipeline blocks in the morning, cold calls in the afternoon, and an end-of-day mind dump so the laptop actually closed.

When his $150K pipeline goal felt like it "was working against me", he swapped it for one self-sourced meeting a week.

The next week he booked two.

All of that is the short version. Twelve sessions of the LOOP Method went wider.

The After

By the end of the programme, Nolan was the number one pipeline generator on his team, with conversations open in over half of his top 30 target accounts, and a pipeline generation award for new logos along the way.

The system behind the numbers: 75 touches a day, running on prep done the night before.

His words:

"I was like, wow, I'm getting a lot of confidence from doing this."

The payoff he never saw coming was boundaries:

"I had no idea that was going to be my number one thing that I'm kind of driving towards."

His girlfriend went from competing with the job to defending his schedule to their friends.

Evenings ended with the laptop closed, not in bed at 7pm. Still working hard.

In his own words:

"More importantly, it finally felt sustainable - not frantic."

Same work ethic. Same territory. A different operating system underneath it.

"Now I've got the system for clarity, focus, and self-belief that I was missing before. I know I can take this system anywhere. It hasn't just made me a better salesperson - it's improved me outside of work too."

• Nolan, Regional Sales Manager, Splunk

From Nolan's Testimonial

"From day one, Ben didn't just throw tips at me. He guided me to build a personal operating system that actually worked for me - not some generic sales playbook. We worked on the stuff nobody at work talks about: understanding and managing my mindset, setting boundaries internally and externally, structuring my day around my best energy, and trusting myself to execute without overthinking. If you're where I was - frustrated, inconsistent, and stuck overthinking - stop wasting time. Work with Ben."

• Nolan, Regional Sales Manager, Splunk

If working harder is the only answer you've ever had, and it has stopped working, the next step is a conversation, not a commitment.

Book a Game Plan Call below. 15 minutes on where you're stuck and what's underneath it.

Name changed to protect the individual's privacy.